
■ < s 









VV 



■ 



■ 







w 



I 



c » r 



The Order of Creation. 



The Eras. 


Formations. 


Life. 




T 


he Six Days. 


! 


















s 1 




Post Tertiary. 


Man. 












r? ' 




















The Neozoic 
















V 
















Era. 


Glacier. 






Glacier. 






Pliocene. 


Mammalia. 






_ri 






— 




Miocene. 


Tertiary Ani- 
mals. 






t/3 

l-i 

.«43 






s 

g 

ri 




Eocene. 








-4-» 




.« 


a 












m 




v> 














o> 




T3 














-t-> 




U 




Mesozoic 


Cretaceous. 


Birds. 






ID 




'5 


>~. 


Era. 








d, 


g 




... 


Q 




Jurassic. 






-• 


O 




OT 


l "~ l 




Triassic. 


Reptiles. 




ri 
(U 

□ 
ri 


U 

V 


to 
ri 
en 
""C3 
ri 




> 

\/ 








The 


Permian. 


Batrachian. 


M 


^§ 


rt 


c 


^ ri 

■go 


v 


Palaeozoic 
Era. 


Carboniferous. 


Amphibian. 


o 


o 


CJ 

be 
aj 

> 


o 

c 






Devonian. 


Fishes. 


~ 


rS 


cT 


§ 


ri s 






Silurian. 


Crustacean. 


1> 


bJD 


t3 


[/} 


v— v— 






Cambrian. 


Coral. 


g 


*y 


ri 


w 


ri' 












ri 


r^ 


bo 


Q 








Mollusk. 


r^ 


S3 


Q 


S 












p. 


<u 

CJ 


- 


0) 


> 










5 
o 


ri 


>, 


h 


\/ 










Protozoic 


Laurentian 


Animal Life. 


s 


z 


Q 


> 

i — i 


V 




Era. 


Rock. 


Vegetation. 


tri 


s 
g 

ri 
g 

<£ 

o 


1-4 

V 


V 












The Azoic 


Dry Land. 




.. 


c - ' 


\ / 






Era. 

i 


Ocean. 
Molten Rock. 




-4-> " 

bo 
ri 


ri 

1— i 


V 












Q 


\ / 












Space-making. 


~ 


V 












Light. 


\ / 


V 












Motion. 


v 










Chaos. 


Nebula. 


Darkness. 


V 










Eternity. 




God. 










- 



THE 



Story of Creation 



v 



V 



BY 



S. M. CAMPBELL, D.D., 

AUTHOR OF "ACROSS THE DESERT," ETC 




- 

BOSTON: 

LOCKWOOD, BROOKS & CO 

1877. 

ft 






COPYRIGHT, 1877, 
BY 

Lockwood, Brooks, & Co. 






*? PREFACE. 

I have a story to tell. It is one that many persons have 
r^ told before me ; but that is no reason why I should not tell it 
again. Others have given it in their way, and I give it in mine. 
Theirs may, in most respects, be the better way ; and yet I 
may say some things which they have omitted, or possibly gain 
the attention of some persons who would not listen to a more 
elaborate effort, or to one made with a greater show of learning. 
My treatise is a brief one, and offered with little pretense ; and 
yet, I have seen the time myself when I would have been glad 
to find, anywhere, just such a simple and easily understood 
rendering of this great subject as will be found in these pages. 
It is not enough to write for scholars ; the story of creation is 
beginning to interest a large class of plain, unlearned men. 

I offer great latitude here to the speculations of modern 
science. This will not strike all my readers favorably; but 
time, I think, will justify the course I have taken. I have lived 
to see the nebular hypothesis propounded, disputed, and at 
last quite generally accepted. The development hypothesis 
seems passing the same ordeal. It has not yet, by any means, 
been established, — but it is every year gaining ground with 
scientific men ; and the question is already upon us, whether, 
in case that hypothesis were established, we could maintain 
our faith in the Bible. Some scientific men say no ; some zeal- 
ously religious men say no. Others, equally wise and equally 
good, say yes : the Mosaic cosmogony and the development 
hypothesis may be so interpreted as to stand in perfect har- 
mony. In this work I take my stand with the latter class, and 
make my appeal to all honest inquirers and earnest workers, 
whether in the field of biblical interpretation or in that of scien- 
tific research. Whether we read from the rock-record or from 
the inspired Word, the story of creation is essentially the same. 

S. M. C. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

An ancient document — Moses : what he wrote : what he claimed — Modern science : 
conflict with Moses — The reconciliation ---------9 

CHAPTER II. 
The Creator : his name — In the plural — In the singular — Names indicate nature — 
God's nature a plurality — The Trinity ---------13 

CHAPTER III. 
Creation : what was it ? — The heaven : one God — Eons and Demiurgs — Creation 
absolute — Bara': asa: tadhshe __--_--_-_ 18 

CHAPTER IV. 

Mind and matter: which was first? — Self-existence — Mind superior to matter — 
Matter had a beginning — Matter and force -------- 23 

CHAPTER V. 

The beginning: when was it? — The date "4,004 B. C. " — The old writers — Tally- 
sticks — The Genesee River : the rock it has cut through ----- 28 

CHAPTER VI. 

Tohu and bohu — Primeval matter: a nebula — Prof. Tayler Lewis — Moses' record: 
remarkable coincidence — Darkness ----------33 

CHAPTER VII. 
The other record : does it agree ? — The nebular hypothesis — Evidence from the 
planets — Still existing nebulas — Prof. Alexander - - - - - - -37 

CHAPTER VIII. 
A world on fire — Water and steam — Internal heat of the globe — Volcanoes — Igneous 
rock — The poles flattened — Another fire --------42 

CHAPTER IX. 
A chaos of boiling seas — The cold of the spaces — The cloud-wrapping — The age of 
storm — Chaos three-fold ---- ; ------- 46 

CHAPTER X. 
Maherepheth : the brooding — Order of writing — The waters — Not the wind — Mo- 
tion — Prof. Tyndal's "potencies" — Natural law -------52 

CHAPTER XI. 
Let there be light — Division of the verses — God "said" — A luminous nebula — 
Clouds breaking — Dark and light nebulae — Prof. Mitchell — Light before the sun 
— The angels' shout — Day -----_-___- 59 

CHAPTER XII. 
The light a blessing — A world of blind men — Vegetation — A tonic — Color — Things 
afar — Light-houses — The telescope — The spectroscope — Joy 64 



Contents. 5 



CHAPTER XIII. 

The creative day: evening and morning — Solar days — The "obvious meaning," 
Tyndal — Translators — Dr. Murphy's reading— Not a day-measure - - - 72 

CHAPTER XIV. 

The creative day; confirmatory — Several meanings here — No other allusion to it in 
the Bible — Overlapping of the days — The first day --____ 7 ^ 

CHAPTER XV. 
Argument from the seventh day — How long since creation ceased? — No evening — 
All that in them is — The fossils -------- __g 2 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Objections — Why not before? — Where are your "six" epochs? — The fourth com- 
mandment: God's days and man's — Clock-time ------- g6 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The firmament — God and nature : the supernatural — Firmamentum : the rakiah — 
Bad translations — Moses' exact statements -------- g X 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Space-making — The nebula breaking up — Professor Guyot — The process — Sublime 
spectacle ----------_____ gg 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Another view: the atmosphere — A double concord — Cloud-masses: ocean — Prof. 
Waring: "not good" — Balloon ascent : peril ------- IOO 

CHAPTER XX. 
The uses of the atmosphere — A London fog — Hearing — Atmospheric pressure — 
Perfume : Joppa oranges — Respiration : oxygen — The blood — Professor Dalton 105 

CHAPTER XXI. 

The atmosphere as a water-carrier — Watering the earth — Evaporization — Motion of 
the air — William Arnot — Cloud-making — Moist air — Blue sky : sunsets - - 111 

CHAPTER XXII. 
The name he gave it — Heaven — How high — The starry heaven : a million — The 
third heaven — Where is it? — Maedler of Dupal — Alcyone — The sea of glass: 
calm --------- -118 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
The third day — Under water — The two triads compared — Evidences of universal 
ocean: sea-shells on dry land — Moses anticipates geology — A flood long before 
Noah ---------------- I24 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
Let the dry land appear — Natural agencies — St. Augustine — Nantucket — Temple 
at Puzzuoli — These changes once on a large scale — Not in one solar day - - 129 

CHAPTER XXV. 

The contour of the continents — God and nature : the eye — Three continental masses 
— Double masses — Rocky points — Bent on the west side — Guyot — Steffens — 
Mountains — Rivers — Cities — History - - - - - - - - -134 

CHAPTER XXVI. 
The origin of life — Spontaneous generation: room for it — Nothing full-grown — 
Interpositions — The "plant before it grew" — Dr. Murphy — Professor Bush — 
The passage wrong end foremost - - - - - - - - - -141 



6 Contents. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 
Moses and Mr. Darwin — Unnecessary conflict — Galileo — Leibnitz' mistake — Dar- 
win: germs — The doors open — Limits to Darwin's theory — President Anderson 

— Professor Tyndal : his recognition of God — President Potter — Dr. McCosh — 
Dr. Brown -------------- I4 6 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 
Grass, herb, and fruit-tree — The system of Linnaeus : not here — The kinds not neces- 
sarily simultaneous — Vegetable life first — Dr. Dawson — Professor Dana — By 
topics — Side by side — The anthem - - - - - - - - -154 

CHAPTER XXIX. 
The noonday of vegetation — Luxuriance — Carbon — Moisture — Heat — Great ferns 
and mosses — Coal-pits — Remains in coal mines — Light, heat, and energy stored 
up — Professor Huxley _-_-_---____ jj8 

CHAPTER XXX. 
The fourth day : sun and moon — A new triad — Perspective : photography — A deso- 
late orb : its great uses — The greater light : spots : corona : the storms — Refriger- 
ation : the sun extinct — Slow process --------- ^5 

CHAPTER XXXI. 

Was it a creation? — Dr. Murphy's "appointment" — Hugh Miller — Removal of the 
earth's photosphere — Guyot — Overlapping of the a days — Brightness made alter- 
nate — Terrestrial life by periods - - - - - - - - - -172 

CHAPTER XXXII. 

Time-keepers — Signs: agriculture — Inclination of the earth's axis — Importance of 
time-keeping — Bible and almanac — Amazing accuracy of celestial chronometers 177 

CHAPTER XXXIII. 
The stars also — What were "the stars" ? — Different kinds — Deck-watches — Planets: 
comets: meteors — Meteoric stones — British museum — Meteorites and comets: 
analogy ______-_-_-_--- 184 

CHAPTER XXXIV. 

The solar system — The cycles of the planets — The real centre of the system — 
Copernicus — Newton — Kepler : his enthusiasm — The eight children of the sun — 
Our own world in the temperate zone — Are the planets inhabited ? - - - - 189 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

The fixed stars — Real stars — Fixed but not stationary — Great suns — Dr. Burr — 
Kingcraft — Multitudes — Distance — Measuring by light — Dr. Chalmers — The 
atonement --------------- 198 

CHAPTER XXXVI. 

The star-systems — Apparent grouping : real grouping — Names — Multiple stars — 
Clusters — Sir John Herschel — Color — Nebulae — Nebulous stars — Islands — God 
and nature --------------- 204 

CHAPTER XXXVII. 
The fifth day — Upward — The spawners — Fowl : flying-thing — Tanninim — The 
waters — The order of succession: from lower to higher — Bara — Bringing forth 

— Professor Lewis ------------- 212 

CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

The response of nature — Science dumb : a finger pointing — How did Moses know ? 

— Lowly creatures — Fertility of lower animal orders — Poli — Science : the record 218 



Contents. 7 

CHAPTER XXXIX. 

The reptiles and the birds — The successive dynasties — Batrachian life — Saurians — 
Association with birds — Archasopteryx. — Translations — Geology an interpreter. 222 

CHAPTER XL. 

The sixth day : its morning — A new race of creatures — Nephesh hayah — Wild beast 

— Death and pain before Adam — Prowlers — Milton — Among the mammalia - 228 

.CHAPTER XLI. 

The earth-product: /its period — Milton's conception — Each " after his kind " — Tay- 
ler Lewis — Nature and the supernatural — The period the same as the mammalian 
of geology --------------- 233 

CHAPTER XLII. 

Neozoic time — Four great periods — Subdivision of the neozoic — Extraordinary fauna 

— Cattle, creeping thing, and beast — Carnivora — A prowler — Moses and the 
geological succession ------------- 239 

CHAPTER XLIII. 
A pause : the ice-age — The break in the story — What is a glacier : its rate of motion 

— Duration of the ice-age — Natural cause of it — Its uses — The inclination of the 
earth's axis -___--__------ 246 

CHAPTER XLIV. 

A spring-blossom — Breaking-up of winter — The diluvian period — Appearance of 
man — The strange beasts he met — Replenishing and subduing - - - - 254 

CHAPTER XLV. 
Man and beast — Indications of superiority — The formula — Man comes last — The 
subject enlarged upon — The creation of the woman — Scientific corroboration - 261 

CHAPTER XLVI. 

The divine in man — Man's dominion — In the image of God — No animal so made — 
The breath of life — Not of the earth, but of God ------- 265 

CHAPTER XLVII. 
From the dust — How from the dust ? — A clay form — Through previous generations 

— President Potter — Professor Lewis — Professor Winchell — The Bible admits of 
derivation ---------- _____ 270 

CHAPTER XLVIII. 
Darwinism: not proven — Honorable warfare — Darwin's admissions — The inclined 
plane not to be found — The gaps to be filled — The widest gap of all between 
monkey and man _------____._ 274 

CHAPTER XLIX. 
Wanted: living witnesses — A graduated series not necessarily an evolution — Apes 
three thousand years ago — Egypt — Alternate development and interposition — 
Interpositions the exception --------- -278 

CHAPTER L. 
Primeval man — Was he a savage ? — He was primitive — His dress — His treasures — 
His actions — Speech — Agriculture — His moral sense — When did he appear — 
Hodge — Location -----.--__... 284 

CHAPTER LI. 
His religion and his civilization — The record in nature — A recent creation — A 
religious being — Monotheism — The two streams of western migration — Civiliza- 
tion close to the old centre ------------ 289 



8 



Contents. 



chapter LII. 

The early race and the earlier — Postdiluvian and antediluvian — Paleolithic and neo- 
lithic man — Reindeer age — A continental subsidence — Nephilim — Violence - 295 

CHAPTER LIII. 

Emigration — Bushnell — Guyot 
301 



Deterioration — Degradation of species — The fall- 
— The lines of remote emigration - 



CHAPTER LIV. 

Of one blood — Relation of the doctrine to Christianity — Agassiz and Darwin — 
Language — Mental unity — Spiritual unity — Depravity — Physiological and ana- 
tomical unity — The sketch of the hairy elephant — Surgery ----- 306 



CHAPTER LV. 

How old art thou? — Our Reference Bible — Egypt — The zodiacs- 
Roman pottery ---------- 



Nile-deposit — 



3i3 



CHAPTER LVI. 



Cave-men — Floods — Kent's Hole: stalagmite — Professor Winchell : Iowa lead- 
mines — Captain Brome — Gibraltar — " The Nation " — Kentucky flat-boat — Dr. 
Pfaff -319 

CHAPTER LVII. 

The seventh day — Creation on our planet ended — The rest-season — No new type of 
life since man — God's work and rest our pattern — Spiritual advantages - - 326 

CHAPTER LVIII. 
Resume — Beginning — Chaos — Light — The expanse 



cending scale — Marine life- 
— The flood - - - 



Ocean — Vegetation — As- 
The tanninim — Sixth day — Eden — The expulsion 



33i 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Frontispiece — Order of Creation. 

The Solar System as a Nebula - faces 39 

Age of Storm ------ 49 

Temple of Jupiter Serapis - - -131 
A Forest of the Coal Period - faces 159 
Found in Coal ----- 161 

A Lunar Crater ----- 167 

A Sun Spot ------ 169 

The Earth at the Vernal Equinox - - 178 
General View of a Comet - - - 187 
Venus in its Different Phases - - 192 

Mars ------- 193 



Saturn ------- 194 

Cluster in Hercules - - - - 206 

Ring Nebula ----- 208 

Nebulous Star - 209 

Hadrosaur ------ 223 

Dinotherium ------ 243 

The Gorner Glacier - - - - 248 

Elephas Primogenius, etc. - - - 258 
Relative Size of Skulls - - - - 280 

The Original Centre and the Course of 
Migration ------ 291 

Elephant engraved on ivory - - - 311 



THE STORY OF CREATION. 



CHAPTER I. 



AN ANCIENT DOCUMENT. 



\ BOUT 3,500 years ago, a man sat down to write a 
history of creation ; and that unique and curious 
production still survives in its original language and form. 
The writer, according to the notions of those times, was 
an educated man ; but he knew almost nothing of that 
system of science by which in modern times the same 
history is revealed. There was no such science as 
chemistry in his day. Scarcely was there any such thing 
as astronomy. And some of the plainest things in com- 
parative anatomy, botany, geology, and physics, had not 
yet been dreamed of. 

Yet the writer launched out boldly, and told his story, 
as one who knows the truth and does not fear to chal- 
lenge contradiction. Of necessity he made his produc- 
tion a brief one ; and yet he crowded into it a great num- 
ber of particulars. He described the condition of things 
when all these worlds lay formless and void. He out- 
lined in graphic succession the great changes that oc- 
2 9 



io The Story of Creation. 

curred afterward. He marked the epoch at which life 
appeared ; and having traced this mysterious agency 
through its successive developments until it culminated 
in the advent of man, he arrested his narrative, saying 
that after this creation paused, and God rested from all 
his work. 

This daring author was Moses, the ancient Jewish law- 
giver ; and the document ne prepared is to be found in 
the opening chapters of the Hebrew Bible. He claimed 
to have received his knowledge on this subject by divine 
inspiration ; and until quite lately, his story has been re- 
garded, wherever known, as the most rational and con- 
sistent account of the matters upon which he treats, any- 
where to be found. Indeed, the far greater number of 
those who have well acquainted themselves with this doc- 
ument, have, even to this day, accepted it as the sure 
word of God. 

But of late a story of creation has been made out, from 
the study of the natural sciences. Astronomy, physics, 
botany, comparative anatomy, chemistry, and most of all 
geology, have been interrogated on this subject ; and the 
answers they give, arranged in careful order, have formed 
a new document, which, in the estimation of some per- 
sons, squarely contradicts the old. So, one party has 
risen to say that the new story can not be true, because, 
as they believe, it is contrary to the sacred Scriptures ; 
while very naturally another party has risen to say that 
the Bible is not true, because it gives statements in this 
matter which are quite opposite to the facts in the case. 

This dispute has had one good effect : it has led to a 
more careful examination of the ancient document, and 



An Ancient Document. 11 

to a more accurate interpretation of it, on the one hand, 
and it has stimulated a more eager study of the volume of 
Nature on the other ; and we are coming to see that the 
two histories, which were at first thought to be so utterly 
irreconcilable, are singularly alike. As our knowledge 
advances, new coincidences between the two appear, some 
of which are very striking ; and, although we have much 
to learn yet on both sides of this question, we have 
reached a position from which we may safely declare the 
essential agreement between the word and the work of 
God. * The discoveries of modern science are antici- 
pated, in this remarkable document, to such an extent as 
to furnish an argument, of very great weight, showing 
that Moses wrote by inspiration of the Holy Ghost. He 
possessed a knowledge which none of the schools of his 
time could give. He gave, in outline, the course of crea- 
tion, so as it is found to have been, by the best and latest 
scientific researches of this nineteenth century. 

It is not unlikely that his story is, in part, a compila- 
tion. There may have been traditions which he pro- 
duced in written form. There may have been brief writ- 
ten documents, handed down from times before the flood. 
And putting these together under divine guidance, he 
may have sifted out the truth from them all, and woven it 
together in his curious narrative. There are some pecul- 
iarities in his writings which suggest this view ; and we 
need not hesitate for a moment to accept it ; for a man 
may be as truly inspired to compile a work from existing 
documents, as to prepare an original composition on the 
same subject. And if we attempt to cast away this por- 

* Dr. Dawson: Proceedings of Evangelical Alliance, 1S73, P* 2 7 2, 



12 The Story of Creation. 

tion of sacred Scripture, as unworthy of belief, we may as 
well prepare our minds to cast away the whole. The first 
chapter of Genesis and the last chapter of Malachi, the 
Old Testament Scriptures, and those later writings which 
are received in the Christian church alone, are to be ac- 
cepted or rejected together. And, as Jesus once said, 
" Had ye believed Moses ye would have believed me, for 
he wrote of me," * so Moses might now say to those who 
attempt to cast away his writings while clinging to the 
New Testament, " Had ye believed Jesus ye would have 
believed me, for he spake of me." 

Jesus always recognized the Jewish Scriptures as of 
divine authority. To those writings he appealed in his 
disputes with the Pharisees. On them he based his own 
high claims as the Messiah. And one of the very last 
things he said, before ascending unto the Father, was, 
"All things must be fulfilled which were written in the 
law of Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms, con- 
cerning me." f Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms : 
this was the three-fold division of the Hebrew Bible ; and 
these three Jesus received and held as the Word of God. 

* John v. 46. t Luke xxiv. 44. 






The Creator: his Name. 13 



CHAPTER II. 



the creator: his name. 



r I ^HE document we have been considering opens with 
these words : " In the beginning God created the 
heaven and the earth." This material universe, accord- 
ing to the statement, had a Creator. Who is he, and 
what is his name ? 

In our English speech we call him God, or, as the word 
means, the Good One. The Hebrew word from which 
we translate this term, however, is Elohim, which means 
The Great or The Strong. And it is a curious circum- 
stance that this term, as it occurs in the story of creation, 
is in the plural number. A perfectly exact rendering of 
the passage above quoted therefore would be, " In the 
beginning the Gods created the heavens and the earth." 

This is very remarkable. In this book the doctrine 
most of all insisted upon is that there is but one God. 
This doctrine is boldly proclaimed as against the exag- 
gerated polytheism of Egypt. This doctrine is incul- 
cated upon the minds of God's chosen people in every 
possible manner ; and they are forbidden to worship or 
recognize any other being whatsoever as a true god. 
And yet in the opening sentence of the narrative, all this 
teaching seems set at defiance, while in each section of 



14 The Story of Creation. 

the story, the fact presents itself again and again that 
this creative work was done by the Elohim, or the Gods. 

To add to this mystery, as the narrative moves on, a 
new name comes in. We begin in the second chapter, at 
the fourth verse, to read the Lord God, the word Lord be- 
ing printed in capital letters, to indicate that in the origi- 
nal the term is Jehovah. He is called Jehovah Elohim. 
This is the new name, Jehovah ; and this name is as stub- 
bornly of the singular number as the other is of plural 
form. This is the puzzle : a name for God, which is 
always found in the plural number, though we are per- 
sistently taught that there is but one God ; and this name 
closely conjoined with another which is not only found in 
the singular number here, but which has no plural form 
in the Hebrew tongue. Added to this is the circum- 
stance that, with few exceptions, like that in Genesis 
i. 26, where God says, " Let us make man," the pro- 
nouns which stand for this plural name are always in the 
singular. And added to this is the other circumstance, 
equally significant, that all the verbs which should agree 
with this curious nominative, are also in the singular 
number. So that we find the word God a plural nomina- 
tive, and " created " a verb in the singular number to 
agree with it ; God, a plural name, and Jehovah, a word 
that has no plural, joined with it ; Elohim implying more 
than one represented as creating what the book persis- 
tently declares to have been made by only one, because 
there is of such but One. A great contradiction this ; 
what does it mean ? 

Some hold that the plural number here is simply the phi- 
ralis magistaticus, the royal style. Kings use the plural 



The Creator : his Name. i 5 

number, and God uses it because he is a king. But one 
difficulty with this view is, that where God particularly 
appears as King, he announces himself to the people by 
the other name.* The supreme word is not Elohim but 
Jehovah, not the word in plural form but the one in the 
singular. Moreover, the custom of kings to speak in the 
plural number is comparatively modern, and certainly had 
not begun in the time of Moses. " I am Pharaoh," said 
the great monarch of that day ; and even as late as the 
captivity, the proud king of Babylon speaks in the same 
manner. " I make a decree,"! says Nebuchadnezzar. The 
pluralis magistaticus had not yet appeared. It is an in- 
vention of later times. 

Names, as they appear in Scripture, have great signifi- 
cance. They always indicate the nature of a thing ; and 
when names were given to men which did not sufficiently 
suggest their peculiarities, they were changed or other 
names were added. Abraham's name was changed in 
that way ; so was Jacob's ; and so was Simon Peter's. 
Therefore where we have a series of names applied to the 
divine Being, we may naturally suppose that they repre- 
sent certain peculiarities of his nature. If he is called by 
one name that always indicates plurality, we may suppose 
that there is a plurality in his being ; and if he is called 
quite as often by another name, indicating oneness and 
indivisibility, we may conclude that there is a unity in his 
being. And if these names are closely conjoined, then 
we may conclude that his nature embraces both a plurality 
and a unity ; or, in other words, that there is a sense in 
which he is more than one, and another sense in which he 
is one only. 

* Exodus iii. 14. t Daniel iii. 29. 



1 6 The Story of Creation. 

What conception of God is there which embraces these 
peculiarities ? Why, clearly this, and this only — the 
Christian conception of three Persons in one Godhead. 
There is but one God, Jehovah ; but he is the Elohim, the 
Trinity, subsisting in three Persons, the Father, the Son, 
and the Holy Ghost. It need not, indeed, at all be main- 
tained on this account that this doctrine of the Trinity is 
revealed in this early writing ; but it may be insisted that 
the way is left open for it. Nay, more : there are pecul- 
iarities in this first verse of the first chapter of Genesis, 
which find rational explanation in no other way. 

There is also an interchange of the divine names in 
these chapters, deserving some attention. In the first 
chapter, the divine Being is simply called Elohim, God ; 
and this continues through three verses of the chapter 
following. But when the next verse is reached, the word 
Jehovah, Lord, is introduced, and we read Jehovah Elohim, 
Lord God. This continues till the close of the third 
chapter, when the word Elohim is dropped, and we read 
only Jehovah, Lord. This method runs on till we reach 
the fifth chapter, where the writer returns to the use of 
the word Elohim, God, as at the beginning. 

It is not easy to account for these changes. Perhaps 
the simplest explanation will be the most nearly correct. 
It is not impossible that these several ways of mentioning 
the divine name were simply the several styles of com- 
position peculiar to those writers whose productions 
Moses has compiled into this narrative. These writers 
may have been inspired persons ; or, though uninspired, 
Moses by inspiration may have selected and arranged 
their writings so as would give us, in its best form, the 



The Creator : his Name. i 7 

history he would relate. Possibly we have here fragments 
of authorship far more ancient than the time of Moses. 
We do not know how early men learned to write, and 
here may be words traced first by Noah in the ark, by 
Enoch before God took him, by Abel, or by Adam him- 
self. Moses may have used these documents, if such 
there were, by divine direction, in making up his history, 
retaining the language and style of each writer from 
whom he gathered his materials. To some persons this 
will be an unwelcome suggestion. To give up the idea 
that Moses wrote this book as an original composition, 
dictated to him by God, will seem to them like giving up 
our belief in his inspiration. But not so. The faith we 
have in this book does not depend upon the question who 
wrote it, or in what way it was put together ; but upon 
the fact that both our Saviour and his apostles distinctly 
recognized it as the Word of God. 



J 8 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER III. 

CREATION : WHAT WAS IT ? 

66 TN the beginning God created the heaven and the 
earth : " what was this act of creation ; and how 
much is included in the words "the heaven and the 
earth " ? 

The word heaven in this passage, as it stands in the 
original Hebrew, is in the dual construction : that is, it 
signifies two heavens, or the double heaven. The word 
refers to the apparent blue vault above the earth, and the 
corresponding vault under the earth. These two vaults, 
constituting a hollow sphere, phenomenally encompass 
our world ; and the statement is that God created this 
hollow sphere and also the solid world on which we dwell. 
What that sphere may be, Moses does not yet say ; nor 
indeed what may be the shape or the constitution of this 
solid world. The blue sky may be either a solid vault or 
an open expanse. This world may be either a broad 
plain or a rolling ball. On these points he in no way 
commits himself, in the general statement above quoted. 
But, of one thing he makes positive affirmation — God 
created this world and those skies around it. Whatever 
they embrace is the work of his hand. In more modern 
speech, therefore, his statement would be that God at the 



Creation : What was it ? 19 

beginning created the entire material universe. The 
terms heaven and earth, in the mouth of a Hebrew, sig- 
nified everything. And what is here declared is well par- 
aphrased by the evangelist when he says, "All things 
were made by him, and without him was not anything 
made that was made." * 

It was the design of Moses, apparently, in making this 
statement, to exclude the idea that any being, except the 
one true God, performed any part of this creative work. 
And the motive for this precaution may be discovered in 
the prevalent polytheism of the age when this history was 
prepared. One of the worst errors into which men fell, 
after the apostasy, was the multiplying of objects of wor- 
ship. As they lost their love for the true God, they 
began setting up for themselves rival deities with whom 
he should share his honors. This proved a source of cor- 
ruption. As it sprang from the depraved heart, so its 
tendencies were always degrading. Gods of human in- 
vention were much the same sort of beings as their inven- 
tors — passionate, selfish, unjust, impure ; and the rites in 
which their worship was celebrated, were in no way cal- 
culated to elevate men, but often to degrade them. This 
was polytheism : a religion that debased its votaries, and 
that dishonored the true God. And in Egypt at least, 
where Moses was educated, this religion was thoroughly 
established, and was exaggerated to its utmost extreme. 

Moreover, it was a peculiarity of all polytheism, to be- 
gin with some idea of cosmogony, or world-making. Where 
it prevailed, people had no idea of one God who created 
all things, but conceived of an inferior class of beings, 

* John i. 3. 



20 The Story of Creation. 

Eons and Demiurgs, who built upon the great fabric, and 
joined their powers to put it in shape. And, as a con- 
sequence, honors were paid to these imaginary beings 
which were due to God alone. The beautiful volume of 
Nature, every line of which was written by the divine 
hand, was ascribed to other and inferior authorship, and 
God was thus robbed of the honor of his own work. 

Against this Moses set this statement of the facts of 
creation, in stern array. His narrative is one solemn pro- 
test against that form of religion which so dishonors God. 
And in this opening sentence of his story he aims a 
thunderbolt at the head of the monster whom he would 
destroy. There is one God, he says, and only one. It is 
the same voice to which the Almighty himself responds 
when he says, " I am the first, and I am the last, and be- 
sides me there is no God." * 

It would also appear to be the meaning of this record 
that the act of creation was original and absolute. In 
other words, the writer indicates that the heaven and the 
earth were brought into being from nothing. Some who 
have made this subject their study think that they find 
this statement in the very terms employed. The word 
translated create in this narrative is the Hebrew bara ; 
and this word, it is said, indicates absolute creation. It is 
not safe, however, to rest too much on this species of argu- 
ment ; for the primary meaning of the word bara is rather 
to shave, to cut, and to shape ; and thus it applies quite 
naturally to building up a structure from existing mate- 
rials. Moreover, the term is used in several places in 
Scripture where absolute creation is not a supposable 

* Isaiah xliv. 6. 



Creation: What was it? 21 

case ; as in Ezekiel xxviii. 13, where the creation of the city 
of Tyre is spoken of, and in Isaiah xliii. 7, where persons 
are spoken of as created, though begotten and born in the 
natural way. Nevertheless there may be such a handling 
of this term as would make it almost impossible to give it 
the lower meaning ; and in the first chapter of Genesis- 
this handling is certainly significant. 

Thus, while the origin of» the universe is represented 
by the word create, the subsequent modifications and ad- 
ditions described are represented by other terms. From 
the second verse of the chapter, to the close of the twen- 
tieth verse, the word is make, or bring forth, or set, but 
not create. But, before the account of the fifth day's 
work closes, the story of that day upon which animal life 
appears, the word create comes in again. True, the 
things here created are said to be " brought forth " as 
well ; but the new thing, animal life, was a creation. 
This, in the twenty-first verse ; while in the twenty- 
seventh, where the closing work of the sixth day is de- 
scribed, and where another new thing appears, to wit, the 
immortal life of man, the solemn word bara is once more 
brought into requisition. At each of these points there 
was a creation : first, when the cosmic matter was called 
into existence, from which the " worlds were framed ; " 
second, where that new thing appeared which we call con- 
scious life ; and third, where that being came upon the 
stage in whom everything was to culminate, immortal 
man. For these the word is bara; for the rest it is some 
such term as asa, to make, or tadhshe, to bring forth. 

The use of these selected terms, to describe the vari- 
ous acts of God, in world-making, may properly suggest 



22 The Story of Creation. 

the inquiry whether creation, so called, did not occur in 
various ways. That it all came about by the divine 
power, and according to the divine will, there is no doubt. 
But may not the process, subsequent to the original fiat, 
have been in part by natural law ? We shall see good 
reason, as we proceed, to answer this question in the 
affirmative. We shall discover that while at particular 
points there was a direct divine interposition, producing 
immediate results, in other cases the work was done by 
the steady operation of those natural causes with which 
we are now familiar, and under those general laws which 
God ordained when the constitution of the universe was 
first proclaimed. 



Mind and Matter : Which was First ? 23 



CHAPTER IV. 

MIND AND MATTER: WHICH WAS FIRST? 

HTHE materialism of our day describes thought as 
brain - action. Destroy the brain, it says, and 
thought ceases. Damage the brain, or disturb its func- 
tions, and thought is damaged or disturbed in like man- 
ner. What we are accustomed to regard as spiritual in 
man is the product of what is material. Mind is gener- 
ated by matter ; and if there be such a thing as a Univer- 
sal Mind, universal matter gave it birth. This reverses 
our usual method of reasoning, and prepares for us a rec- 
cord which shall read, " In the beginning, the heavens 
and the earth created God." 

It is a necessary starting-point in this discussion, that 
either mind or matter is self-existent. If matter pre- 
ceded mind, so that the latter is its product, then is mat- 
ter self-existent ; and if mind preceded matter, so that 
the latter is its product, then is there a self-existent mind. 
One or the other, mind or matter, is uncreated, and from 
eternity ; which is the thing we mean when we speak of 
self-existence. One or the other, mind or matter, owes 
its existence to no previous cause. 

An advanced position in this argument, equally conclu- 
sive, would seem to be that mind is superior to matter. 



24 The Story of Creation. 

It subordinates matter to its uses ; controls, combines, 
tears asunder, and treads upon it. Even the human 
mind does this ; and if we are to admit the idea of a crea- 
tion at all, obviously mind receives matter as created for 
its uses. Mind is intelligent and conceives. Matter is 
•mconscious and dead. Did the dead generate the living 
Ihing ? or did the living thing create and give life unto 
that which is of itself dead ? 

Our record indicates that mind came first and matter 
afterward ; and there is abundant evidence that there was 
a beginning to this material frame. If you take any ex- 
isting type of animal life, you easily trace its history 
backward till you find the point where it first appeared 
on the earth. That was its beginning. If you pursue 
your researches in the vegetable kingdom you find it the 
same. The recorcj is in the rocks. Any one who will 
study may learn to read it for himself. Each one of the 
ten thousand lines of animal and vegetable life runs back 
to a beginning. And if you go beyond the life-record to 
the rocks themselves, on which all this has been written, 
it is still the same. Every type of rock had a beginning ; 
and the geologist learns to point to that beginning, and 
to say, " Before that period, no such rock formation can 
be found." The universe is full of these indices. From 
every spot it lifts a finger-post pointing backward to an 
origin. It proclaims itself, too clearly to be misunder- 
stood, a thing that has not always stood, but which 
began. 

Well, if it began, then there was a cause. And as this 
cause was not matter itself, which up to that point had 
no existence, it must have been mind. And as this mind 



Mind and Matter: Which was First? 25 



must have been uncaused, and eternal, it must have been 
self-existent, which is the same as to say it was divine. 
There was a beginning to this material universe. That 
beginning was caused. That cause was not material but 
spiritual, and was itself uncaused. And that is the same 
as to say it was God. So nature herself proclaims what 
the record in the Book declares, that in the beginning, 
God created the heaven and the earth. 

This doctrine was quite as contrary to the philosophy 
of the ancient world, as it is to certain schools of modern 
thought. Outside the Hebrew family, all the ancient 
philosophy ran toward the theory that matter was eternal 
There was a belief in the existence of gods, indeed, and 
of gods that were world-makers ; but they were gods who 
built up from existing materials. Matter, as such, had no 
beginning. In some formless condition, at least, it existed 
from all eternity. Such was the Phoenician philosophy, 
such the Babylonian, such the Egyptian; while as the 
Greek schools arose, such teachers as Democritus, and 
Epicurus, and Plato, and Aristotle appeared to give shape 
to these conceptions. Moses, being a man "learned in 
all the wisdom of the Egyptians," must have been famil- 
iar with this philosophy ; but he struck out a theory of 
his own. God revealed it to him. It was the theory so 
clearly stated by the apostle afterward, when he said, 
" Through faith we understand that the worlds were 
framed by the word of God ; so that things which are 
seen were not made of things which do appear."* 

Ex nihilo nihil jit, said the schools ; and Moses an- 
swered back, There is a creator, God. He set aside the 

* Hebrews xi. 3. 



26 The Story of Creation. 

old maxim, as something irrelevant, or as something be- 
longing only to that school of thought which had been 
generated by polytheism. The pagan deities indeed were 
not creators; but the one Supreme and Self-existent 
Being was such. He spake, and it was done. He com- 
manded, and it stood fast. 

Nor is the conception of such a creation entirely for- 
eign to the better philosophy of our times. The relation 
of mind to matter, the point where the two bind together 
and seem to impinge the one upon the other, is found 
in the term force. The human mind generates a force 
which contracts a muscle and so moves an arm. Again 
it gives its fiat and it moves the head or the feet ; and by 
this force, which it spontaneously generates, it subjugates 
the physical world. 

And when you ask, What is matter ? perhaps the most 
philosophical answer possible is, Matter is force. It re- 
pels what crowds against it, or is itself repelled. And 
if you add to simple force certain things adjunctive, such 
as form and color, and then if you generate certain modi- 
fying forces, such as gravitation and chemical affinity, 
you at once begin to build up Nature. You get hard 
matter. You get natural law. God, the Spirit, estab- 
lishes these forces, and orders these adjuncts ; and the re- 
sult is a system endowed for self-movement, which, once 
set going, runs on like a clock until its Author chooses 
to stop its motions. 

This is one of the latest, and one of the most subtle 
conceptions of Nature. Matter is force. Stripped of all 
that is adjunctive and extraneous, and brought down to 
its simplest philosophical terms, matter is a force estab- 



Mind and Matter : Which was First ? 27 

lished by the great Spirit, God. As our minds generate 
force at will, in a way we cannot fathom, contracting our 
muscles, moving our limbs, and giving us dominion over 
Nature, so did the Eternal Mind, in a way we cannot 
fathom, generate and establish that resisting force, out of 
which came the present order of things. This force con- 
tinues while he pleases. To us, it is indestructible ; and 
so we say that matter only changes form, and is never 
annihilated. But when he who established that force sees 
fit to call it back again, then form, substance, quality, all 
that we know or can conceive of matter will disappear, 

"Nor leave a wreck behind I" 



28 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER V. 

the beginning: when was it? 

TT was once common to suppose, that the original crea- 
tion of this whole material universe occurred about 
the year 4004 B. C. There were indeed some, holding 
no mean position in the church, who declined accepting 
that theory ; but the opinion somehow became prevalent, 
and was regarded as the solemn teaching of Holy Scrip- 
ture. One author went so far as even to surmise the 
day of the month, September 21, 4004 B. C. ! And this 
notion, in a form more or less definite, is still rooted in a 
great many minds ; so that with many persons, to say 
that this globe was built more than 6,000 years ago, and 
especially to say that man has been upon it for a greater 
length of time, is the same as to deny the truth of the 
Bible. And the result has been, that men who have 
always hated the Bible, have seized their opportunity, 
and have so pushed the evidence of the antiquity of this 
planet, that some have even seemed to fear lest the old 
Book must go down. There has been, however, a kind 
of lull in the battle lately, during which good men have 
been wise enough in some cases to read the record once 
more, and carefully inquire what it says. And the more 
carefully they have inquired, and the more diligently they 



The Beginning : When was it ? 29 

have studied, the more thoroughly have they become sat- 
isfied that the Bible assigns no exact date to the creation. 
As a marginal reference, or as a running title, the Book 
may be printed with the heading for Genesis, first chap- 
ter, " 4004 B. C," but that is the work of the printer or 
of the publisher, and Moses is not responsible for it. He 
says " In the beginning," nothing more. 

Some of the early writers of the Christian church dis- 
covered this fact, and called attention to it. Justin 
Martyr noticed it ; and so did Basil and Caesarius and 
Origen ; and among later authors, Patrick, Calvin, and 
Jennings, all allow that the beginning may be put indefi- 
nitely away. * These men wrote without the slightest 
knowledge of geology, and under no pressure such as 
might be supposed to be created by modern scientific dis- 
covery, and yet they conceded that so far as the record 
could be made to show, the work of creation might have 
been performed at a period far more remote than the tra- 
ditional 4004 B. C. 

The lessons we have been learning on this subject are 
precisely the same the friends of the Bible were obliged 
to go through about three hundred years earlier, when 
the modern system of astronomy was being settled. It 
was at that time generally supposed that the earth stood 
immovable, at the centre of the great celestial sphere ; 
and when the new science announced that it was spin- 
ning about its axis like a boy's top, and worse than this, 
being shot through the spaces like a great cannon ball, 
all its seas and cities and people holding fast upon it as 
best they might, the suggestion was regarded as very un* 

* " Science and the Bible." By Herbert W. Morris, D. D. 



30 The Story of Creation. 

scriptural, not to say alarming. So great indeed was the 
opposition to this new science that some men were near 
losing their lives for it. And yet how completely has 
the conflict passed away ! The Bible survives, and so 
does the Copernican astronomy ; and no one in our day 
seems to have any desire to set the one against the 
other. No friend of the Bible considers himself obliged 
in the interest of religion to say that the world makes no 
journey round the sun, nor does any astronomer regard 
himself as called upon in the interest of his science to 
deny the truth of the Bible. The two books, Nature and 
Revelation, stand side by side ; and, so far as astronomy 
is concerned, in perfect harmony. So will it be with the 
conflict now upon us. 

That our world is of very great antiquity, cannot well 
be doubted. Nature has a system of tally-sticks on which 
she notches off the centuries, and by which, in a general 
way, she writes out her own age. When a great tree is 
cut down you count the " rings " from the surface to the 
heart, and judge very closely how old it is. So, there 
are rings on the earth, indicating, with at least ap- 
proximate accuracy, what, ages must have passed by 
since time began. Some of these time-marks are made 
by our rivers. An illustration may be taken from the 
Genesee, in Western New York. Just below the city of 
Rochester, this river leaps down a precipice of about one 
hundred feet into a gorge, cut in the solid rock, through 
which it makes its way to Lake Ontario. That gorge 
was manifestly cut by the river itself ; and the length of 
the cutting is about seven miles. The work is still 
going on. The river is removing the rock, and ex- 



The Beginning : When was it ? 31 

tending the gorge up toward its source at the rate of 
about one foot in every four years. That is, this 
stream makes a clean cut from the rock to the depth of 
about one hundred feet, at the rate of about three inches 
every year. Now as there are 5,280 feet in a mile, 
the cutting of a gorge like this for the distance of one 
mile, at this rate, would require 21,120 years ; and the 
entire seven miles to the lake would require 147,840 
years. The river, however, was once much larger than 
now, and the rock was then perhaps less firm. So we 
will only claim for this work a period, in round numbers, 
of 50,000 years. This must be regarded as a very mod- 
erate reckoning. The Genesee River has been flowing in 
its present channel at least 50,000 years. 

This is one notch in our tally-stick ; let us take another. 
We have reckoned by what is known as the Upper 
Fall only. The rock through which this fall cuts is 
mostly a limestone, and was formed by a slow deposit on 
the floor of an ancient sea. Largely it is built up of the 
cast-off shells of marine creatures. Many of these were 
very small creatures, some microscopic, and as they died 
and their shells fell upon this sea-floor they gradually 
formed this limestone rock, one hundred feet thick. This 
was a slow process. It never could have occurred in less 
than 100,000 years. And underneath this limestone rock 
lies one of sandstone, through which the Lower Fall cuts 
its way, the formation of which must have required at 
least 100,000 years more. So, putting our figures to- 
gether, we get at this one point on the earth's surface, a 
tally-mark of at least 250,000 years. By similar reckon- 
ings in other parts of the world, where the rock deposit, 



32 The Story of Creation. 

all combined, is sometimes found twenty miles thick,* we 
get a date almost infinitely remoter. The beginning 
recorded in Scripture, therefore, must have been millions 
of years ago. 

A few good men may indeed be found yet, who deny 
all this, and who consider it their duty to say, "The Bible 
is against it;" but when such men as Principal Dawson 
of Montreal College, and Professor Dana of Yale, and Dr. 
Arnold Guyot of Princeton, accept these conclusions, we 
need not fear to accept them also. These men, and others 
like them, are as firm in their christian convictions as 
f icy are profound in their scientific attainments. They 
understand the Scriptures, too, and they can find no 
place in holy writ where the statement is made that this 
world of ours was created only 6,000 years ago. It is an 
o] d world : part of a general system of worlds. And it is 
altogether a mistake to suppose that the date of its crea- 
tion is in any way more definitely fixed by the sacred 
record than to say, it was " in the beginning." 

* " Sketches of Creation." By Professor Winchell. 



Tohu and Bohu. 33 



CHAPTER VI. 



TOHU AND BOHU. 



PHE ground over which we have thus far passed is 
covered by the first verse of the first chapter of 
Genesis. We now advance a step and consider the state- 
ment made in this narrative, in regard to the early condi- 
tion of our planet. This takes us to the second verse of 
the chapter, which reads as follows : " And the earth was 
without form and void, and darkness was upon the face 
of the deep." The Hebrew terms rendered "without 
form and void " are set at the head of this chapter. 
They are tohu and bohu ; and we will endeavor to ascer- 
tain their exact meaning. 

In almost all nations, there has been a tradition that 
our world, at a very remote period in the past, was in a 
state of chaos. Thus, the poet Hesiod says, almost as if 
quoting from Moses, " In the beginning was chaos ; " 
and this condition of things he describes as a commin- 
gling of earth and air, fire and water, cold and heat, light 
and darkness. And Ovid's oft-quoted words, rudis indi- 
gestaque moles, a " rude and unformed bulk," echo the same 
conception of those ancient times. 

The terms used by Moses to describe this state of 
things signify confusion and emptiness ; and, in that very 
old Greek translation which we call the Septuagint, the 



34 The Story of Creation. 

rendering is u unwrought and invisible." Tohn signifies 
confused or unwrought ; and bohu signifies empty, and 
invisible. Prof. Tayier Lewis, one of the ablest philolo- 
gists of our time, says that the two terms refer, " the one 
to utter irregularity of dimensions and outward extent, 
the other to deficiency of gravity, denoting not so much 
an absolute as a relative want of weight ; " and adds that 
the language would describe "a fluid or rarefied condi- 
tion, with an absence of all solidity and cohesion, or it 
may be a huge nebulosity, that had been floating through 
space for millions of years, if any such term can be em- 
ployed of that which has no inward or outward measure 
of time."* 

This interpretation is very remarkable : the more so, 
because Professor Lewis seems afterward to suppose that 
Moses is describing our globe as it was after it had 
assumed a solid form, though yet in a broken and disor- 
dered condition. "At this period," he says, "it was a 
wide fluid mass, a waste of water, without a shore, with- 
out a bottom, without a sky above, or any terminating 
solid bound."f When therefore he says that the terms 
used would describe a huge nebulosity, floating through 
space, he does so as a conscientious interpreter, and not 
as obliged, to put this meaning on the passage by the 
exigencies of his own theory. His theory would rather 
be against such an interpretation ; and yet he says such 
is the literal rendering of the terms — "instability and 
irregularity of outline," and "deficiency of gravity," in 
short, "a nebulosity," or cloud -like thing "floating 
through space." 

* " Six Days of Creation," page 60. t Id., page 6y 



TOHU AND BOHU. 35 



We shall not greatly miss the truth, therefore, if we say- 
that Moses here describes our world as a nebula. He 
might even be supposed to describe it as a part of an 
immensely greater nebula, from which it had not yet been 
separated. The matter of which the present globe is 
composed was, at the time of which he speaks, in that 
condition. It was nebulous matter ; it had no settled 
shape ; it had little cohesion ; it was vaporous in char- 
acter ; it was diffused through an immense region of 
space, and, for aught Moses says to the contrary, it may 
have been at the time mingled with the matter now 
forming other globes and suns and systems, a part of one 
common nebula, out of which this entire material universe 
has been constructed. This would be a natural interpre- 
tation of the terms here used. If, in any way, it should 
ever be ascertained that our globe was once in a nebulous 
condition, or that it was once even a part of a still greater 
nebula, it would be fair to say that Moses seems very 
much to describe that state of things. He says that it 
was at first tohu and bohu, and that means that it was a 
nebula. 

One other statement still remains : " Darkness was 
upon the face of the deep." What was this deep ; and to 
what period does this statement refer ? " The deep," in 
Scripture, commonly means the sea, but not always, as 
may be seen in such passages as Luke viii. 31, where the 
demons entreat our Lord not to send them out into the 
deep. And in the passage now before us, the Septuagint 
renders the term, the abyss. The Hebrew word thus 
translated here is tehom, which, according to Professor 
Lewis, is the same as the tohu, though the two words 



36 The Story of Creation. 

have not the same root The deep was the thing without 
form and void ; and the only addition we have obtained 
to the information given in the first clause of the verse is, 
that this void and formless thing was dark. 

The expression is without qualification. This nebula, 
if such we are to regard it, was not luminous in itself, 
nor did any light shine upon it. The great mass was 
itself dark, and all the spaces beyond it were dark. No 
created eye could have seen it, nor could such an eye, 
looking out from it, have discovered, even in the utmost 
distance, so much as the faintest twinkle of the feeblest 
star. There it lay, empty and desolate, unwrought and 
invisible, tohu and bohu, an object to human conception 
meaningless and unpromising. And yet what is most 
unpromising in its beginnings sometimes contains capa- 
bilities the most wonderful. And this black, empty va- 
por held within it the germ of all these starry worlds. 
The blue sky was there, and the silver moon, and the sun 
that dazzles the eye with its blaze. This globe was there 
with all its continents and rivers and seas. God saw all 
this, and as those possibilities one after another unfolded, 
at his word, he pronounced them good. 

How long it lay in this condition, Moses does not say. 
So far as his record shows it may have been but an in- 
stant ; or equally, it may have been millions of years. 
There were no time-measures then, and a thousand years 
were much the same as one day. 



The Other Record : Does it Agree ? 37 

•-- 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE OTHER RECORD I DOES IT AGREE ? 

T"N nothing are our men of science more generally 
agreed than this : that our planet, at an early date, 
was subject to an intense heat. All the strictly "primary 
rocks " were once in a melted condition ; and the globe 
itself has assumed just the shape that would be taken by 
a drop of liquid matter, rapidly whirling on its axis. 
These indications, and many others of like character, 
point to a time when our whole world was in a state of 
fusion, and when it swung round in its orbit a huge blaz- 
ing star. 

It is but one step beyond this, to just such a condi- 
tion of things as is described in the second verse of the 
first chapter of Genesis. For, as it seems quite certain 
that our planet was once melted, so it would need but a 
sufficiently greater degree of heat, to change the molten 
mass to vapor, or to make it a nebula. 

In this way we can vaporize the hardest substances. 
Take for example a piece of steel. Let it be the very 
finest and hardest of steel — a watch-spring. If you heat 
this steel in a furnace, it becomes liquid, or melts, and 
lies in the crucible a red, glowing mass. If you apply to 
it a heat still more intense, as the blaze from a compound 



38 The Story of Creation. 

blow-pipe, it not only soon begins to melt, but to burn ; 
and that with the most brilliant light conceivable. To 
use a common phrase, we " burn it up," which means 
that we change it to invisible vapor. 

Now what may be done in this way with a watch- 
spring, may be done with a whole world, or with a solar 
system, or with a whole group of such systems. If the 
Creator please to apply to these systems the agency of 
heat, in sufficient degree, they change to vapor, and be- 
come one mingled, undistinguishable, impalpable haze. 
From these solid systems to the nebular condition of 
things the transition is perfectly simple and plain. Or 
reversing the process, this universe may have been origi- 
nally created in a nebular condition, and then the simple 
process of slow cooling would bring it down into fluid 
matter first and into solid matter afterwards. 

And to show that this is no mere theory, we have among 
the heavenly bodies this process going on before our 
eyes. Our moon, small among the worlds, has cooled off 
very rapidly, and is a waterless, lifeless thing, as cold as 
a piece of frosty steel. The world we inhabit, being 
larger, cools more slowly; and enjoys at present that 
temperature which is best fitted to sustain life. It is like 
the steel still pleasantly warm from its late contact with 
the fire. The planets Jupiter and Saturn, being much 
larger, cool more slowly still, and are much in the condi- 
tion of the steel while red-hot ; their satellites, perhaps, 
still warmed by these planets, from which they are sprung, 
being about in the condition of our own globe. None of 
the planets are now vaporized ; though Saturn is encir- 
cled by a ring, thrown off when it was in a vaporous con- 



The Other Record : Does it Agree ? 39 

dition ; while Jupiter has numerous vapor belts such as 
a heated planet would produce. They are not melted 
planets, or blazing planets, but they are evidently in too 
heated a condition to constitute a suitable abode for such 
a being as man. 

If we now rise one step above the planetary range, and 
come to the sun, we find it, as we might expect, the hot- 
test thing in our system. Essentially, it is the system ; 
the planets being but fragments which it has thrown off. 
Its huge bulk, many times greater than that of all the 
planets united, cools slowly. And so we see it blazing 
yet, just as the planets themselves did, long ages ago. 
Nevertheless, the process of cooling is going forward ; 
and there is no reason to doubt that, in due time, so far 
as temperature is concerned, the sun may furnish a suit- 
able home for beings like ourselves. 

Besides this, there are certain way-marks quite out be- 
yond our system, where we seem to see matter in a more 
primitive condition still. Even to the naked eye, certain 
curious patches of light appear in the starry heavens ; and 
by the aid of the telescope we find still others, where the 
vaporous matter, already become luminous, is slowly con- 
densing into systems and stars. Nor are there wanting 
certain obscure but unquestionable dark patches in the 
sky; some of which, like the so-called "coal-sacks " of the 
Milky Way, are at times quite conspicuous, and which 
strongly suggest to us that stage of primeval matter when 
"darkness was upon the face of the deep." So we trace 
the line of succession : the dark nebulae, showing us mat- 
ter that has not yet become luminous ; the light nebulae, 
showing us matter upon which God has pronounced the 



40 The Story of Creation. 

words, " Let there be light ; " the melted, burning, blaz- 
ing systems, like the sun and the stars ; and the various 
planetary worlds in successive stages of cooling, from 
almost red-hot Jupiter down to our poor frozen moon. 

From such data as these, men like La Place and the 
younger Herschell wrought out a theory known as the 
Nebular Hypothesis ; and according to this theory, all 
the planets, asteroids, satellites, suns, and stars of the 
great group to which we belong, and which is best ob- 
served in the Milky Way, once constituted such a neb- 
ula as we sometimes see now in the far-off sky. The 
doctrine was that all these stars and systems once existed 
as a " thin, impalpable haze," filling all the immense 
spaces now intervening ; that somehow this nebula was 
set whirling ; that in process of whirling it broke up into 
fragments ; and that these fragments, still whirling, still 
further condensed and consolidated into the worlds and 
systems which we now behold. 

This splendid hypothesis at one time received a severe 
shock, and seemed likely to be overthrown. Some unus- 
ually powerful telescopes were constructed, particularly 
one by Lord Rosse ; and it was found that some of the 
supposed nebulas were simply groups of stars. On this 
discovery, the conclusion was somewhat hastily formed, 
that all the supposed nebulae were of that nature. But 
an instrument was soon after invented, known as the 
spectroscope ; and by means of that it was determined 
that some nebulae at least were in a true vaporous condi- 
tion. So the Nebular Hypothesis has revived once more, 
and is now generally accepted by scientific men. Indeed, 
Dr. Alexander, of the College of New Jersey, is said to 



The Other Record : Does it Agree ? 41 

have demonstrated the truth of this hypothesis, by an ex- 
haustive mathematical calculation. * 

So, our latest conclusions in the field of science lead 
us precisely where we found ourselves when we had fin- 
ished our interpretation of the second verse of the first 
chapter of Genesis. Moses in that verse describes pri- 
meval matter as unshapen, diffused, and dark ; and Sci- 
ence, by her most recent utterances on the subject as 
given in the Nebular Hypothesis, answers, " So it was." 
How it was that Moses put on record, 3,500 years ago, 
substantially what our scientific men have only recently 
discovered, let those answer who deny that he wrote by 
inspiration of God. How did Moses know in that age of 
mental night, and before one of our modern sciences was 
born, what the rest of the world has for nearly 4,000 years 
been struggling after, and has now but just discovered ? 
The simplest, easiest, most natural answer to this ques- 
tion is, that he was taught of God. 

* See Prof. Guyot's paper read before the Evangelical Alliance in 1874. 



42 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



A WORLD ON FIRE, 



TT 7E have already observed that a melted substance is 
* vaporized by increasing the heat upon it. In like 
manner a vaporized substance may be made to assume a 
liquid form by the process of radiation or cooling. And 
then the liquid substance may be made a solid, by cool- 
ing it still further. Our most readily understood illustra- 
tion of this statement may be taken from the different 
forms of water. Water is a fluid ; and by increasing its 
heat it becomes vapor, and by diminishing its heat it be- 
comes ice. Water heated intensely, so as to form true 
steam, becomes an invisible vapor ; and this vapor, first 
condensing so as to become visible, soon after, as it cools, 
becomes water again, and then, still cooler, becomes solid 
ice. 

Through just such changes has our world been passing. 
In the former chapter we saw it as a vapor : in this, we 
shall regard it as a world of melted matter ; or, as it 
would seem to a beholder, a World on Fire. 

It has been found by experiments made in boring arte- 
sian wells, and by tests taken in deep mines, that the 
earth is warmer below the surface than it is where we 
commonly stand. Speaking in general terms, the tern- 



A World on Fire. 43 

perature at the depth of one hundred feet is one degree 
higher than at the surface ; and for every additional hun- 
dred feet of depth, the mercury rises about one degree 
more. Of course it will be seen that if this rate of in- 
crease should steadily continue as we descend, everything 
within the globe, at a depth of eight or ten miles, must 
be in a state of fusion. Owing, however, partly to the 
pressure upon the surface of this melted mass, and partly 
to various other causes which need not here be indicated, 
it will perhaps require greater heat to melt the rock in- 
side the earth than the above reckoning would lead us to 
suppose, and so the earth-crust is undoubtedly much 
thicker than this calculation might imply. Moreover, 
there is some reason to believe that at great depths the 
increase of temperature would be found somewhat less 
rapid ; and there are places on the globe, no doubt, where 
the earth's crust may be an hundred miles thick. Even 
this, however, makes it but a shell ; and, in particular 
places, it is manifestly a comparatively thin shell. Very 
few persons, therefore, who have given the subject their 
attention, will at the present day doubt that our globe, 
except as to its outward shell, is a mass of incandescent 
matter. 

It confirms this view that on nearly every part of our 
world there are marks of volcanic action. That is, the 
melted matter has everywhere been breaking through the 
shell, and spouting forth its rivers of lava. Volcanoes, 
not a few, are still active ; but the proportion of these to 
the immense number of volcanoes now extinct, that have 
left their marks on the globe, is very small. Once these 
open places through the earth's crust were seen almost 



J 



44 The Story of Creation. 

everywhere ; but as our planet cooled, one by one they 
closed up, and now the number is comparatively small. 
The source of heat, however, of which these volcanoes 
were the vents, must lie nearly everywhere beneath the 
surface of the earth. 

All this points to a time when our globe was made up 
entirely of such melted matter as these volcanoes have 
spouted forth. And, even now, it is not so cooled but 
that in certain places, there occurs at times a dangerous 
outburst ; while in still wider sections of country, the 
ground is often so disturbed by earthquakes induced by 
the same cause, as to endanger the inhabitants. These 
upheavings and outbreakings are the remains of a once 
universal agitation — the reminders of a period when our 
planet was as yet no possible home for such a being as 
man. 

Add to this the fact already noticed, that our globe is 
flattened at the poles and bulged out at the equator, just 
as we should , expect it to be if it revolved on its axis 
while in a liquid state. Add another fact : all the oldest 
rocks, all those known as " primary," are of igneous ori- 
gin, and show the action of fire ; that is, they have all 
at some time been melted ; and their heat has been such, 
at times even since the stratified rock was deposited, that 
the latter have been quite changed in character by the 
contact, forming what is known as metamorphic rock. 
Put into the account still another item, that there has 
been a crumpling, wrinkling, crooking, and upturning of 
the rocks in numerous places, as if the shell of the earth 
had become too large for the constantly shrinking enclos- 
ure within it. Put all these items together, and you have 



A World on Fire. 45 

almost if not quite a demonstration of the fact that this 
world was once a globe of liquid fire. It remains so yet, 
indeed. As to its principal bulk it is the same molten 
mass as in the times referred to. It is like a deep lake 
frozen over ; and we build our cities on the ice-crust, as it 
were, with the solemn warning distinctly before us in 
God's Word, that the day is coming when it will be once 
more a world on fire. 

This is the second stage in the creative process by 
which our world was formed. Moses makes no allusion 
to it, unless perhaps he intended to cover this chaos of 
fire, as well as that of nebulous matter, when he spoke of 
the tohn and bohu, but it has its bearing on what goes be- 
fore. If the nebulous condition of matter as described 
by Moses were its primeval condition, this is what we 
would expect to discover — evidence that at a later stage 
this planet was a mass of liquid fire. Such evidence we 
find ; and it forms a connecting link between the prime- 
val condition of matter and the present condition of our 
globe. Nay, it lifts a beacon that casts its glare forward ; 
and helps us to understand what is meant by the apostle 
when he says that hereafter " the heavens shall pass 
away with a great noise, and the elements melt with fer- 
vent heat." * 

* 2 Peter iii. 10. 



46 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER IX. 

A CHAOS OF BOILING SEAS. 

~\T 7HILE this planet was in the molten condition al- 
ready described, we may supppose it to have been 
regularly making its journey round the sun, the same as 
now. And as its mean distance from the sun is about 
95,000,000 of miles, its whole orbit would measure about 
570,000,000. These figures are not intended to be exact, 
but they serve to represent the great journey our planet 
performed of old and still performs every year. 

This journey lies through cold space. How very cold 
the region is which it thus traverses, we may judge by 
merely going out into it such small distance from the 
earth's general surface as we may reach by climbing a 
mountain. A very moderate height on such mountain 
takes us to a region of perpetual snow. On the highest 
summits, even in the torrid zone, the thermometer stands 
at a point far below zero. And were we able to reach a 
distance in space of not more than fifty miles from the 
earth, we should come to a degree of cold of which we 
have never formed any conception. It has been estimated 
that the mean temperature of the spaces through which 
our globe travels is not less than 230 below zero. Rev. 
Dr. Burr, in his " Ecce Ccelum," puts it at 50,000° below. 



A Chaos of Boiling Seas. 47 

These estimates simply signify that such space is incon- 
ceivably colder than anything of which we have any 
knowledge. And if that be so, it is not wonderful that 
the original vaporous masses were condensed into molten 
matter, or that a melted globe should after a time be 
crusted over with a solid layer of stone. As a lake in 
winter covers itself with ice, so this lake of fire, passing 
through those cold spaces, was frozen over, as it were, 
and shut in with a cover of stone. 

The process would not be so rapid, however, as we 
might, perhaps, suppose. This infant globe was not sent 
unclad on its long, cold journey, but was well provided 
with warm, fleecy wrappings. We seldom think of the 
dense vapors and clouds that occasionally obscure our 
sky, as intended to keep our world warm ; but they have 
an important commission for that purpose ; and we can 
frequently see their working. As the cold season ap- 
proaches in autumn we sometimes say, " If it clears off, 
there will be a frost to-night;" and so we find it. A 
clear night brings frost ; but a cloudy night checks the 
rapid radiation, and we escape. The cloud-masses that at 
present encompass our globe, however, as compared with 
those in which it was wrapped at an earlier day are very 
thin and slight. At that time, when this was a molten 
world, all the water now in the seas was thrown up in the 
form of dense vapor. Besides this, all the carbon now 
forming our coal mines and forests then hung over the 
earth in what we should call thick smoke-clouds, charged 
with carbonic acid gas. While added to all this were nu- 
merous other substances, such as sulphur, gypsum, salt, 
and even limestone, which were entirely vaporized by the 



48 The Story of Creation. 

intense heat, and which went up ^.s the smoke of a great 
furnace, to complete the "swaddling band" with which 
God wrapped his infant world.* 

The mighty frigidity of the spaces through which it 
traveled, however, prevailed against all these preventions, 
and the earth steadily grew colder. On the outer surface 
of its vaporous envelope drops of acrid rain would form, 
changing rapidly to bright hailstones or to flakes of snow. 
And these once formed would immediately drop into the 
glowing torrid mass below. But long before they reached 
the surface of the earth, they would be vaporized once 
more and shot upward again in swift steam-columns into 
the upper air. 

Meantime, on the fiery surface of the planet masses of 
slag and cinder would begin to form, floating there as slag 
floats on melted iron, or as ice floats on water. At length 
it covered the surface ; but the fiery ocean had its tides, 
and the floating film that rested on it kept breaking. It 
grew stronger and thicker, however ; and at last the fire 
was got under. Then there were upheavings, and great 
fissures opened in the rock, through which the molten 
matter was spouted out again. Then it was once more 
got under, and the hatches were put down ; and as the 
cooling process still went slowly on, the inner mass shrank 
away from its rocky covering. This left that covering in 
great wrinkles, as an apple skin is left in wrinkles by 
baking the fruit in an oven ; and this process of wrinkling 
gave the world, here an incipient mountain chain, and 
there a sea-basin, too shallow at first, however, to hold a 
deep sea. 

Then the overloaded atmosphere renewed its energies ; 

* Job xxxviii. 9. 



A Chaos of Boiling Seas. 



49 



and "down came the deluge of sonorous rain." It was 
not the pure soft rain which now distills upon the 
meadows ; but a rain saturated with sulphur, chlorine, 
carbonic acid, and whatever else could combine with it in 
the upper air. It rained aquafortis. In great corrosive 




AGK OF STORM. 



storms it fell ; and falling, it struck upon the red-hot rock. 
In great steam-jets it was shot back again ; and there 
were hissings, and explosions, and the development of 
electrical action, till the thunders bellowed, and the light- 
nings flashed through the gloom, and great earthquakes 

7 



50 The Story of Creation. 

shook the hemispheres. It was the storm epoch ; and 
equally, it was the epoch of the pulverizing of the surface 
rock. For perhaps ten thousand years it poured on. 
Then things began to grow quiet. Gradually the rock 
was made cool enough to retain the moisture. And so 
great floods began to pour down the mountain sides, and 
to fill those shallow, steaming cauldrons which have since 
become our seas. The fires were got under. The waters 
were triumphant. And, with scarcely so much as one 
rock summit projecting above the surface, one great ocean 
covered our planet from pole to pole. 

We have named this epoch the Chaos of the Boiling 
Seas. They were muddy seas as well ; containing or cov- 
ering all the sediment washed from the hot rock by that 
thousand years of acrid rain. And it was a dark epoch, 
too, for the world had shut in its own fires, and was 
wrapped in such masses of vapor as quite excluded the 
light of the sun. The lightnings would, indeed, now and 
then cast their glare across the awful scene ; and a vol- 
cano, here and there, bursting from beneath the waters, 
would hold up its lurid torch against the black sky, but 
with this exception, " darkness was upon the face of the 
deep." 

Some of the features of this epoch will answer to the 
terms in which Moses describes the chaotic age. It may 
not be certain that he had this period at all in mind ; but 
whether it were this, or the epoch of the burning planet, 
or whether, as suggested, he looked still further back to 
the period when the cosmic matter was only a vapor, one 
thing is certain : in our looking for a chaos, in the early 
period of our world's history, such as he indicates in his 



A Chaos of Boiling Seas. 51 



story, one is easily found. When he calls down to us to 
say, "Before life appeared, there was tohu and bohti" 
Science answers back, " Yes ; if tohu and bohu signify 
chaos, the statement is true three times over. There was 
a chaos of cosmic matter, which we call the nebula ; there 
was a chaos of melted rock ; and there was a third chaos 
of corrosive rains, thick vapors, black skies, and boiling 
seas." 

How did Moses know all this ? The simplest, easiest, 
most natural answer is, that he was taught it of God. 



52 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER X. 

MAHEREPHETH : THE BROODING. 

j nr v HE order of writing in Hebrew narrative is not 
altogether an order of time, but often much more 
an order of subjects. That is, the narrator first com- 
pletes his theme ; and then, if it be necessary, turns back 
to take up what has been left behind. This is illustrated 
quite fully in the genealogical record of the eleventh 
chapter of Genesis, where each man's life is followed 
through to the end, before his son's life is taken up in 
like manner. Thus there is an overlapping of one part of 
the narrative upon the other, sometimes to the extent of 
several hundred years. And Salah lived thirty years and 
begat Eber. And Salah lived after he begat Eber four 
hundred and three years and begat sons and daughters. 
And Eber lived four and thirty years and begat Peleg.* 
The two lives overlap each other. 

So is it in the story of creation. The writer takes up 
the tohu and bohu and travels down with it to the end. 
Having begun upon this subject of chaos he continues it 
until chaos is succeeded by order and life. Then he goes 
back and takes up a second topic, which in the order of 
time would open while something of chaos was still upon 

* Gen. xi. 14-16. 



Maherepheth: the Brooding. 53 

the earth. Thus is it with the theme to be gone over in 
the present chapter. We have named it from the Hebrew 
term " maherepheth," which signifies a brooding. The 
words in which it is found are these : And the Spirit of 
God moved upon the face of the waters.* The word 
rendered moved is this maherepheth, which signifies a 
brooding. 

Some have supposed that the waters here spoken of are 
those of the great dark turbid ocean, mentioned in the 
previous chapter. But the date seems earlier. What is 
here recorded is rather the first movement that occurred 
in that dark and dead cosmic matter, out of which the 
worlds were framed by the word of God. This moving of 
the Spirit on the face of the waters was a moving upon 
that expanded nebula which afterwards brake up into these 
stars and systems. 

But how should this be called a moving upon the 
waters ? Does not the term waters strictly confine us to 
the conception of a moving upon the seas, or streams, or 
fountains of our planet ? To this, the answer must be, 
that such is not by any means a necessary conclusion. In 
Genesis i. 7 we read of "the waters that be above the 
firmament ; " and so again in Psalms cxlviii. 4. By this, 
of course, is meant the clouds and vapors floating in our 
atmosphere. And thus we see that the term is not con- 
fined to the lakes and the seas, but is applied to the clouds 
and the vapors as well. So that if you assume that the 
original condition of matter was vaporous, cloudlike, neb- 
ulous, a Hebrew in speaking of it would quite as naturally 
call it " the waters " as anything else. When therefore it 

* Gen. i. 2. 



54 The Story of Creation. 

is said that the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
waters, we are quite at liberty to suppose that the writer 
is describing some great change in the original mass of 
dark nebulous cosmic matter. What change that was we 
shall see further on. At present it is sufficient to under- 
stand that this nebulous matter constituted the waters on 
which the Spirit moved. 

What was this Spirit of God ? The word thus trans- 
lated is, in the Hebrew, Ruah, which in its primary sig- 
nification means the wind. So that some have read this 
passage, "the wind of God," or a great wind. Such a 
wind, they say, blew upon the face of the waters, tossing 
those early seas which encompassed our globe, clearing 
away the overhanging vapors, and preparing for the break- 
ing in of the light of the sun. But this interpretation is 
not admissible. The word Ruah does indeed literally 
signify a wind ; but it is the constantly used term for the 
divine Spirit ; and the instance can not be found in which 
the phrase Ruah Elohim, Spirit of God, means merely a 
great wind. This is the expression employed where the 
Spirit of God moved upon Samson, or where it moved 
upon the old prophets and inspired men. It is not a 
mighty wind that is thus designated, but a divine energy. 
And what we are to understand here is, that after God 
had created matter in chaotic form, he put forth his al- 
mighty energy upon it to give it order and to impregnate 
it with the principle of life. 

This view is still further sustained by the use of the 
term maherepheth, translated moved. That word is never 
applied to the blowing of the wind. It is the word that 
represents the fluttering, hovering, brooding of a bird 






Maherepheth : the Brooding. 55 

upon its nest. It is the word used in Deut. xxxii. n, 
where the eagle is spoken of as stirring up her nest and 
fluttering over her young. That nebulous mass, under 
this brooding, was like the egg warmed by the mother 
bird. It began to assume new character. A life prin- 
ciple was quickened in it. There began to be motion, 
order, and form. Professor Tayler Lewis says that we 
have in this representation " the first beating of Nature's 
pulse, the first throbbing of her mighty heart. Or, to 
change the figure, and yet keep as its grounds the same 
primary image, the tremulous motions indicated by the 
Hebrew verbs are the first notes in the grand diapson, 
the first low trembling barytones, in that ascending scale 
of harmonies that were to terminate at last in Eden and 
humanity." * 

One of the mysteries of the material universe, which 
no science has yet been able to clear up, is motion. It is 
a very first principle of physics, that the natural state of 
matter is rest. It is inert. It has no power to move. It 
resists, in greater or less degree, all power applied to 
move it. And left to itself, it remains forever motionless. 
Yet, singularly enough, everything we see has somehow 
been set in motion. Our planet is in motion, and that in 
several different directions. The sun is in motion ; not 
only turning on its axis, but moving with all its planetary 
train in a vast orbit. And it begins to be more than sus- 
pected that the same is true of every star in the firma- 
ment. Something has come in upon this physical uni- 
verse which has broken up -its state of rest. What agent 
is there that has made this stupendous change ? Science 

* Six Days of Creation, page 67. 



56 The Story of Creation. 

fails to answer this question ; and so revelation lifts the 
veil that hides the mystery and answers as in the passage 
before us, "the Spirit of God." The original nebulous 
mass was somehow set whirling about a centre ; and Moses 
tells us here by what Hand that motion was imparted. 

But there is something besides motion suggested here. 
This brooding means much more. Brooding induces mo- 
tion, indeed ; but that is a result of certain vital forces 
with which the egg is quickened by the process. And we 
shall not greatly miss the meaning of this narrative 4 if we 
suppose that the work represented by so significant a term 
imparted to the cosmic matter certain qualities, and gave 
it certain laws, which it previously did not possess. 
Whence came gravitation ? perhaps from this brooding. 
Whence came these chemical affinities, this law of crys- 
tallization, this electrical action ? perhaps all this and more 
too was imparted to dead matter when the Spirit of God 
moved upon the face of those waters. Professor Tyndal 
says that he sees in matter the potency and the promise 
of every kind of terrestrial life. His remark is an un- 
guarded one, and has been criticised by a good many very 
incompetent persons, as well as by some able men. But 
what if he sees in matter only what God put there by the 
very act we are now considering ? Let Professor Tyndal 
frankly say as much as this, and we need have no further 
quarrel with him. Admit, if you choose, that there is a 
potency in matter to develop into vegetation. Admit 
that vegetation has a potency to develop into animal life. 
Admit that animal life may develop into immortality, as 
in man. That does not rule out the conception of an 
original Creator at all, nor does it force us to the con- 



Maherepheth : the Brooding. S7 

elusion that there have been no divine interpositions since 
the original fiat was uttered. Notwithstanding all that, it 
might still remain true that " in the beginning God cre- 
ated the heaven and the earth," and that subsequently 
the Spirit of God so brooded ,over this creation that ex- 
actly such potencies were imparted to it as Professor 
Tyndal claims to see. Nay, this brooding may have been 
more than once repeated : the term covering not only 
one act but a succession of acts, extending far down the 
history of our world. The terms which Moses uses 
are broad enough to cover all this ; and we are at lib- 
erty to frame such theories as may best fit the facts in 
the case. 

People are often unnecessarily anxious on such matters. 
The theory somehow has got hold of a great many minds 
that when God is said to have created anything, we are to 
suppose that he produced it in a perfectly completed state. 
But this is not so. It is quite as common for God to cre- 
ate things in the germ, giving to that germ certain poten- 
cies for development. Thus, there is not a bird that flies 
in the air but God is its creator ; though he made it not a 
bird at first but only an egg. And so there is not a hu- 
man being on the earth but God is his creator ; though 
certainly he no longer creates human beings full grown. 
So with this vast material univers'e. He created it in the 
germ. It was at first tohn and bohu. Then the brooding 
Spirit came down upon it ; and its heart began to beat 
and its pulse to throb with life. The energy was repeated 
at successive stages ; not in every change that occurred, 
but at the salient points where a new order of energies 
came into play. So was the dead matter impregnated 
8 



58 The Story of Creation. 

with vital forces, making it productive of higher forces. 
And so was it uplifted by these repeated impacts of al- 
mighty power, till it stands before us to-day the study of 
our philosophers and the wonder of our minds. 



Let there be Light. 59 



CHAPTER XI. 



LET THERE BE LIGHT. 



/ 



*T*HE division of the sacred narrative into chapters and 
verses occasionally interrupts the story at the wrong 
point, and associates things which are disunited. Thus 
the second verse of the first chapter of Genesis were bet- 
ter concluded with the statement that darkness was upon 
the face of the deep ; for at that point the writer finishes 
his description of chaos. The remainder of the verse, 
"And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
waters," naturally associates itself with the call for light in 
verse 3 ; for as a natural cause, that moving produced the 
light. That divine energy which imparted motion to the 
nebulous mass ; and which gave it gravity and electricity 
and chemical law, would, in the natural working of things, 
render it after a time luminous. That is, the impact of 
the atoms against each other, under the new force of 
gravitation, the chemical action induced by their greater 
proximity and the electrical forces developed as the process 
went on, would create light ; and thus, perhaps, we are to 
suppose that light was created. 

An extreme literalist might object to this view of things. 
There was a divine call, he would say. God said, " Let 
there be light ; " and it was in answer to this word that 



60 The Stqry of Creation. 

that light immediately sprang up. Be it so. Imagine, if 
you choose, that there was an audible voice, and that na- 
ture responded with a sudden light. Still that voice might 
itself have been uttered, as the Spirit began to move upon 
the face of the waters ; and that movement, as already 
interpreted, might have brought out the answer to the 
call. But why need we be so literal in the interpretation 
of this passage ? Why insist upon it that there was an 
audible utterance, a vibration of an atmosphere, induced 
by the exercise of vocal organs like our own ? Why not 
say that God's word in this case was simply his will, a 
word uttered in his heart, but not pronounced, as if there 
were an ear like ours to hear it? He willed it, and it 
came about. He determined that there should be light 
and there was light. But whether that determination 
were vocally uttered, or whether the light brake out in- 
stantaneously, we do not know. Neither is there any- 
thing in the narrative to compel us to believe that light 
came miraculously. It were just as perfectly in accord 
with the record to say that it might have sprung up, under 
the interplay of those natural forces, so called, which the 
Spirit of God communicated to the dark and nebulous 
mass, when he moved upon the face of the waters. 

Perhaps a more common view of the coming of the 
light is that which puts it at a later date. It supposes 
that our planet has long since been formed, and has passed 
through some important stages of its history. But clouds 
hang thick in all the air, and the world is utterly dark. 
And this voice which brings in the light simply clears the 
air of its vapors, and allows the sun to illuminate the 
earth, though there is still a sky so far clouded that the 



Let there be Light. 6i 

sun cannot yet be seen. This very nearly is the view of 
Hugh Miller ; but the work seems to have been done ear- 
lier. And in support of the theory above elaborated, we 
set against the authority of Hugh Miller the able scholar- 
ship and sound reasoning of Professor Guyot. 

The case viewed in the light of physical science, then, 
is this. The original condition of all nebulae, at least 
hypothetically, is dark ; and although a dark nebula might 
well be supposed necessarily to elude observation, facts 
are not wanting, showing that such objects perhaps exist 
and can be detected, even at the present time. Thus 
Professor O. M. Mitchell says that there is a spot in the 
cluster Orion, which is " intensely black," and which he 
says "appears an absolute vacuity." And he adds that 
in exhibiting the great light nebula in this cluster to per- 
sons who have never seen anything of the kind, the re- 
mark is frequently heard that "a part of the nebula is 
hidden by a black cloud." * 

Here, then, we may suppose are two nebulae in the 
same part of the heavens, the one of which has become 
luminous, and the other of which has not yet reached the 
light stage. So was it with the great mass from which 
God formed our system. At first it was a dark nebula. 
Later it became luminous. That is, under the influence 
of gravity and motion, developing chemical combination 
and electrical action, light appeared. At first it was faint, 
like the mild phosphor of the decaying tree stumps, show- 
ing itself in the dark only. But later it became brighter ; 
and it still burns on. It came by process of natural law, 
but none the less was it the creation of God. His word, 

* " Planetary and Stellar Worlds," page 331. 



62 The Story of Creation. 

or what is the same, his act of will, brought it out. He 
planned for it. He ordered it. And, if we must believe 
that there was literally a spoken word, then was it, after 
all was ready, that the word was uttered. Gravitation 
had been working slowly on for ages, condensing the 
great mass, and bringing atom into conjunction with atom. 
Chemical and electrical energies had been developed to 
the very point of ignition. The train was laid ; the fuse 
was ready ; and then the word was given and the thing 
was done. '■ Let there be light," said the word ; and all 
through that heaving mass a faint aurora ran. It grew 
brighter and brighter, as morning dawns toward noonday. 
It blazed a glorious corruscation, amid the sombre spaces, 
where it hung ; and the glory was seen afar. That was 
the beginning. The light after that never went out. It 
was modified in its character ; it came from other sources ; 
it was centred in narrower spaces, but it only increased 
in intensity till it blazed in awful splendor from all the 
stars and suns. 

This solves the problem of the creation of light before 
the sun appeared. Once this was the great puzzle in the 
story of creation ; and there were not a few fain to urge 
the objection that here Moses had made a mistake. See ! 
he has forgotten himself, they said. He creates light, and 
yet there is no sun till the fourth day ! But Moses did 
not forget himself ; nor did the Spirit who guided his 
hand forsake him at so critical a point in his story. And 
so it happens that, after the infidel has had his laugh over 
the blunder in this narrative, lo, it turns out that there 
has been no blunder at all. That there should be light 
before the creation of the sun is exactly what the nebular 



Let there be Light. 63 

hypothesis, that latest grand conception of science, de- 
mands. Had Moses said that there was no light, until 
the sun was created, he would have shown himself a 
bungler. A man not inspired would almost certainly 
have made that mistake ; for until the working out of the 
nebular hypothesis, that was the common opinion. But 
not so with Moses. Somehow he was kept from commit- 
ting himself to the common error. Somehow he was led 
to describe the appearance of light, long before there was 
any sun to shine upon the earth. The Spirit of God be- 
gan to move ; and immediately the call came. Then light 
appeared, though it was not till long afterward that there 
was any such thing as a sun in our system. There, ex- 
actly, he hit the mark ; and we could not assign any other 
place for the beginning of light in the universe without 
contradicting the facts in the case, as given us in our 
more recent scientific discoveries. 

In the thirty-eighth chapter of the book of Job there is 
an intimation that the angelic host were interested spec- 
tators of some of the phenomena of creation. And if 
such were the case, one would say that their interest 
might well reach its height when light sprang up. One 
imagines those beings, watching the incipient work, with 
their keen intellectual faculties, to which material dark- 
ness presents no obstacle, until all is ready for this great 
change. They perceive those wide vortices in which are 
outlined the first movings of the cosmic matter. They 
mark those enfoldings and breakings up of the extended 
mass. They observe the new forces developing in it, 
and the life with which it is becoming pregnant. They 
are waiting and expecting. Everything begins to portend 



64 The Story of Creation. 

* 
some change ; when, suddenly, as a spark might kindle in 

a magazine, a glow runs through the whole. As they 
look, it brightens. In a little while it is one ineffable 
blaze. They have known something of light, for it has 
always been shining about the Throne ; but this, as creat- 
ing for God a new glory, raises their minds to the pitch 
of ecstasy, and they cannot restrain their praise. Some- 
where, quite early in this world-building, there was joy 
among these heavenly hosts at what God had done. Per- 
haps it was here. Perhaps this is the very moment to 
which God himself refers in speaking to Job, when he 
says, "Where wast thou, when I laid the foundations of 
the earth ... or who laid the corner-stone thereof, when 
the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God 
shouted for joy?" 

The statement that God divided the light from the dark- 
ness is added to the account, as indicating either that the 
light period now began, as distinguished from the dark 
period preceding ; or perhaps meaning that the light mass 
now began to have definite outline, and so to be separated 
from the dark spaces around it. The division was, in fact, 
one of both time and space ; and the statement can be 
applied as well to the one as to the other. 

It is also added that he gave both the light and the 
darkness a name. The light was called Day; the dark- 
ness, Night. This naming things, as they are created, 
continues to the end, when he names Man. The creator 
of a thing claims this right. He gives a name to the 
thing he forms. And so God, who creates the light, gives 
it this name, Day. Just as men N will afterward call their 
short periods of light day, and their short periods of dark- 



Let there be Light. 65 

ness night, so God calls the first light period, extending 
over perhaps millions of our years, Day ; while the pre- 
ceding dark period, extending back to his own eternity, 
it may be, he calls Night. From this great Night and 
Day of God, man names his little night and day, as 
marked by the revolution of our globe. And it is of 
God's measurement, and not of man's yet, that we must 
make account in the additional formula for this work — 
"and the evening and the morning were the first day." 
Man has not yet appeared. Our globe has not yet been 
solidified or even separated from the parent mass. But a 
distinction of light and darkness has been created ; and 
that distinction will continue to the end. Now the light 
is for the one great mass of cosmic matter. Now it is 
for a duration that measures deep into eternity. By and 
by there will be subdivisions ; and both time and space 
will be parceled out in such proportions as can be grasped 
more easily by the mind of man. But in this part of the 
story, at least, the light and the darkness, the evening and 
the morning, the Night and the Day, are set to that broad 
measurement in which one day is as a thousand years, 
and a thousand years as one day. 



66 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE LIGHT A BLESSING. 

" A ND God saw the light that it was good." It not 
only rejoiced the angels, but the Creator himself 
took pleasure in it. He was building a home for intelli- 
gent beings ; and although this light shone out, long be- 
fore there were any such beings on our globe, he saw from 
the first what important offices light would serve, and 
with how much beauty it would adorn the universe which 
he was now creating, and he pronounced it good. 

We can scarcely conceive what this world of ours would 
be without light. Even if everything else were here 
which we now enjoy, pervading and universal darkness 
would make it an unfit ^bode for beings like ourselves. 
We can best conceive of such a condition of things by 
supposing the human family to be all smitten with blind- 
ness. Without light we should be blind ; and how a race 
of blind men could subsist here, we can not easily under- 
stand. The forests might still wave on the mountains ; 
the grass might still carpet the pasture-grounds ; and 
there might be fruits and meadows and wheat-fields ; but 
a race without sight would soon perish in the midst of 
plenty, or eke out a miserable existence scarcely above 
that of the beasts. 



The Light a Blessing. 67 

But, without light, most of the things we now enjoy 
would not exist in this world. There would be no vege- 
tation, or next to none. And if there were any great 
change in the order of vegetation, the entire character of 
the animal world would be changed also. Some of the 
lower orders of animal life might still exist, but there 
would be none of those creatures which are most useful 
to man. And had human beings been placed in such a 
world they would have been at best but a sad and sickly 
race, almost literally worms of the dust, even though they 
had been as now endowed with immortality. 

So, for whatever our world is as a home for man, and 
for whatever man is and enjoys above the possibilities of 
such a worm-like condition, we are indebted to God's gift 
of light. In the light is it that our brilliant insect tribes 
balance their quivering wings and send out upon the air 
the music of their busy hum. In the light is it, especially 
in the intenser light of the tropics, that our birds are 
clothed with a plumage of gorgeous coloring, and pour 
forth their songs. And under the light is it that the 
beauty and the grandeur of this terrestrial scenery un- 
fold themselves in successive pictures, overhung by the 
great dome of sky. 

Nor is it in such things alone that light is good for 
man ; but as perpetually bathing him in new life-powers, 
and furnishing him a tonic that is unconsciously absorbed 
every day into every pore of his system. Those unfortu- 
nate people who are much excluded from the light, the 
poor wretches that live in the low basements and under- 
ground apartments, rear a sickly progeny, and are the first 
to fall victims to any sweeping pestilence. The sun-side 



68 The Story of Creation. 

of a hospital is the side most favorable to the convalescence 
of the inmates ; and a strong sun-bath is sometimes worth 
more to a wasting invalid than either food or medicine. 

Light ministers to our sense of color ; for color is only- 
light variously distributed. The tints of the landscape 
are but so much reflected light ; and it is the same with 
the fleecy cloud that floats in deep heaven, and with the 
ever-changing hues of the restless sea. The sparkle of 
the stars at night, the incoming of the tender dawn, the 
full blaze of noontide when such floods of radiance are 
poured from the golden chalice of the sun, and above all, 
that gorgeous canopy of cloud with which the king of day 
curtains himself in, as he sinks to rest — all these are but 
so many exhibitions of this one element of life. 

A wondrously etherial thing is this ; and yet man has 
learned to handle it. It is the element by which mainly 
he gives expression to his own idealizing. All statuary, 
all architecture, and most of all, all painting, stand 
revealed only under its magic touch. Nor would the 
human form itself be arrayed in its perfect beauty, ex- 
cept the light fell upon it. "We are all of one color in 
the dark ; " and the flashing eye of beauty, the fair cheek 
of maidenhood, and the sweet and holy calm that some- 
times sits upon a countenance crowned with gray hairs, 
would all be lost to this world except for the agency of 
light. 

Light has a special office of revealing unto us things 
that are afar off. Sound is its only parallel in this partic- 
ular ; but light so far outreaches sound as almost to throw 
it out of the comparison. Sound travels with great rapid- 
ity, and reaches us from vast distances, along the surface 



The Light a Blessing. 69 

of this globe ; but light reaches us from other worlds, and 
reveals to us what is going on in other systems. This 
office of light is turned to infinite account. A great lantern 
set to shine from some headland of a rocky coast sends 
tidings to the mariner, and warns him off from the place 
of danger. And a brighter lantern, hung up against the 
north pole, gives him his reckoning, after tossing for 
weeks it may be upon the wide main, with no friendly 
shore in view. A swift-footed messenger is light, bring- 
ing us intelligence from the remotest spaces in an incred- 
ibly short period of time. A rail-train, at best, will run 
perhaps 60 miles an hour : but the light-train comes in 
with tidings each day at the rate of 195,000 miles in a 
single second of time ! It will bring you to-night, from 
the planet Jupiter, news not more than ten minutes old : 
it will lay at your door, if you will be there to get it, a 
dispatch just as fresh from the sun to-morrow morning. 

And we are learning how to read these dispatches. We 
furnish a long hollow tube with a glass or two ground into 
peculiar shape, and turning it toward the heavens, it re- 
ports wonders. There are feculae on the sun's disc. Ju- 
piter balances a system of satellites that make their reg- 
ular journeys round the planet, as the planet itself does 
round the sun. And Saturn hangs aloft with other satel- 
lites and a strange appendage of rings, while whole armies 
of unknown stars come trooping in upon the scene from 
out the depths of distant space. We call the instrument 
which brings all this to view a telescope. 

And there is another instrument of later invention by 
which we read still more wonderful things in the light. It 
is a kind of prism, and as a sun-ray falls through it the 



70 The Story of Creation. 

primary colors are laid out in separate places ; and across 
these colors curious lines are seen passing. These lines 
may be compared to the dots and scratches of the tel- 
egraphic alphabet ; and they can be read quite as distinct- 
ly. They tell us what is the chemical composition of the 
object from which the light comes ; or what substance 
that object is made of. It comes from one object, and 
you look at the writing and read " Hydrogen : burning 
hydrogen." It comes from another source and the word 
is " Thallium : burning thallium." And once more you 
try it and the word is " Silver : pure burning silver." It 
makes these reports from the fires which the chemist 
kindles in his laboratory ; and thus we learn the alphabet. 
Then we try it upon the lights which God has set burning 
in the far-off heaven, and read by the same alphabet the 
composition of the stars and the sun. The distance 
makes no difference. In either case the handwriting is 
plain. 

These are some of the things which light can do. We 
might explore this field much farther, and find new won- 
ders still. But we have seen enough already to under- 
stand why the record should be made, when this element 
first appeared, that God saw the light that it was good. 
He saw then what light was capable of, and what it could 
do for our world. He knew exactly what it would do for 
us, what we should learn from it, and to what uses it 
should be put. He had in mind all the changes it should 
pass through, from its first auroral dawning in the nebula 
till the planets should be formed and the sun should begin 
to blaze upon them. 

He made light a symbol of moral excellence and a type 



The Light a Blessing. 71 

of joy. "Light is sown for the righteous and gladness 
for the upright in heart." He himself dwelleth in light, 
and all who trust his Son and do his will are promised a 
home in that world of which it is said, " There is no night 
there ; and they need no candle, neither light of the sun ; 
for the Lord God giveth them light, and the Lamb is the 
light thereof." 



72 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE CREATIVE DAY : EVENING AND MORNING. 

FN six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, 
and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day.* 
So reads the condensed record of those matters over 
which we are now passing. And, in comparing God's 
Word and his work, we come upon the question, What 
was the measure of these days ? 

We are accustomed to use the term day to indicate a 
period of just twenty-four hours ; or restricting the term 
still more we cover with it that time which elapses be- 
tween opening morning and the coming in of night. 
These are the more common uses of the term ; besides 
which it has a kind of tropical meaning, of rather vague 
sort, as when one says " Not in your day," meaning not 
in your life-time. When we undertake to be very strict 
in the use of this term, we usually confine it to one revo- 
lution of our planet ; and as we are inclined to be very 
strict in the interpretation of Scripture, it is not strange 
perhaps that we have been accustomed to give the term 
this limited meaning in reading the Story of Creation. 
We are reading God's Word, here, we say ; and we must 

* Exodus xx. ii. 



The Creative Day : Evening and Morning. 73 

be very careful not to indulge in any fancies about it. It 
means what it says : and when it says six days, it means 
six days. 

So the opinion has grown up that the Bible teaches 
that each of these creative days measures just one revo- 
lution of our planet, or twenty-four hours by the clock. 
And this view has by many been regarded as so com- 
pletely settled that it is little short of outright infidelity 
to question it. The consequence has been that some- 
thing of skepticism has risen among scientific men ; and 
they have asked whether a book that gives us a cosmog- 
ony of that description can be inspired. Believing that 
the book has been correctly interpreted, and accepting 
the statement that it teaches that creation was wrought 
out in six solar days, they say, " Something is wrong here. 
Creation was a work of immensely greater duration." 
Professor Tyndal, in the preface to the seventh edition of 
his Belfast address, says, " The book of Genesis has no 
voice in scientific questions. To the grasp of geology, 
which it resisted for a time, it at length yielded like 
potter's clay; its authority as a system of cosmogony 
being discredited on all hands by the abandonment of 
the obvious meaning of the writer." * 

What then was the meaning of the writer of this book ; 
and is the " obvious meaning," as Professor Tyndal calls 
it, the real meaning ? Must we hold ourselves here to 
the strict construction of the term day, as a period of 
twenty-four hours ; or may we believe that the inspired 
writers were all in the habit of using such terms in a 
broad and tropical sense, and that, like other men who 

* Page 14. Appleton's Edition. 
10 



74 The Story of Creation. 

write under a strong and impassioned impulse, they often 
dashed off their sentences with a perfectly free hand ? 

We have the book of Genesis in a translation. A few 
scholars read it in the Hebrew, but for the most of our 
English-speaking race, and probably for Professor Tyndal 
himself, the English version of this book is the book. 
But a translation is very liable to be colored unconsciously 
by the preconceptions of the translators. And, as the 
book of Genesis was translated into English before the 
science of geology was broached, and before any person 
living had any idea of the immense duration of the crea- 
tive periods, it is not strange if the translators gave the 
word day an improperly restricted meaning. It is quite 
certain that those men, honest and capable as they were, 
believed the creative periods to have been days of twenty- 
four clock hours each ; and it is equally certain that this 
preconception modified and somewhat marred their usually 
faithful work. 

These men came upon the word yom in Hebrew, and 
said, The equivalent of that word in the English is day. 
And, as they were handling God's Word and must be very 
cautious, they put upon that word the strict and narrow 
intepretation which confines it to a period of twenty-four 
hours. And as they came upon another phrase which 
assigned an evening and a morning to each of these days, 
they made it read as if such evening and morning consti- 
tuted a day. Hence the words, " And the evening and the 
morning were the first day ; " which is not a good transla- 
tion, but a gloss cast upon the passage, unconsciously, by 
the preconceptions of the translators. 

Among the Hebrew people the solar day began at even- 



The Creative Day : Evening and Morning. 75 

ing ; and it seems to have been supposed by our translators 
that the phrase, " the evening and the morning," was in- 
tended exactly to measure that day. But not so do we 
find it. The evening and the morning did not constitute 
a Hebrew day ; for the word morning, with that people, 
even as with us, ran out and expanded itself before noon ; 
whereas their day ran on six hours further, covering all 
the afternoon and not closing until sunset. When a He- 
brew wanted to measure a day he sometimes said " from 
the even unto the even," but he never said that an even- 
ing and a morning made up a day. No such case can be 
found in sacred Scripture. It is an utter mistake to sup- 
pose that Moses here intended by the words evening and 
morning to measure a solar day. 

Rev. Dr. Murphy of Belfast, though himself holding 
still to the traditional theory _of creation in six solar days, 
corrects one translative line and gives us the true render- 
ing of the passage we have in hand. His reading is very 
strict to the letter of the original and is as follows : 
" Then was evening, then was morning, day one ! " Here 
word answers to word. Here is as close and literal a ren- 
dering of the famous passage as the diverse structure of 
the two languages will allow. But is this at all a state- 
ment that an evening and a morning constituted this day ? 
Moses does not say so. His translators say it ; but that 
is a responsibility they assume for themselves ; and if Mr. 
Tyndal means what they say, when he speaks of the " ob- 
vious meaning " of the writer, he would do well to famil- 
iarize himself with the language in which the writer spake. 
All that Moses declares in this passage is that for each of 
these days there was an evening and a morning ; or, in 



76 The Story of Creation. 

other words, that each successive creation was a dawning 
out of the previous darkness and disorder. His state- 
ment has its parallel in the word of the apostle Paul, in 
I Cor. iv. 6, where he speaks of " God who commanded 
the light to shine out of darkness." So, says Moses, rose 
these wondrous days. The first dawned from the dark- 
ness of original chaos ; the others dawned from the re- 
maining chaos. Each was a new morning rising upon an 
unfinished world. 

When therefore we read the words "And the evening 
and the morning were the first day," or were "the second 
day," let us remember that this is not the "obvious mean- 
ing " of the writer at all. For that statement he is in no 
way responsible. Let us remember that an evening and 
a morning did not make up a Hebrew day ; and that the 
mention of the evening and morning here is not intended 
to give us any measure of time whatever. It is simply a 
statement of fact. It is part of the general account of 
creation. It was something worth recording that creation 
occurred by successive dawnings ; that each creative period 
was an uplifting of the globe out of chaos into order, out 
of remaining darkness into the coming light of a finished 
work. Whether one of these days lasted for twenty-four 
hours or for twenty-four thousand years is a question on 
which Moses gives no opinion. He absolutely avoids 
that subject. Or he virtually says, I have no statement 
to make. And if we are so foolish as to tie ourselves 
down to the solar day theory, in the interpretation of his 
words, we deserve all the ridicule that scientific skepticism 
can cast upon us. Quite enough is it if we abide by the 
simple word which God has caused to be made. 



The Creative Day : Confirmatory. 77 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE CREATIVE DAY : CONFIRMATORY. 

W 7E are not studying science just here, but interpret- 
^ ing Scripture ; and we cannot too carefully and 
constantly remind ourselves that whatever light the works 
of God may cast upon his Word, our business as interpre- 
ters is, first of all, to inquire for the plain, honest meaning 
of the record. To make up a theory how that record 
ought to read, and then to impose that theory upon it, is 
at once to be wanting in respect for Holy Scripture and 
in candor with ourselves. We have examined one passage 
somewhat critically, which has been supposed to teach 
that each creative period was a solar day, and have found 
that it has no such meaning. It will be the work of the 
present chapter to examine other portions of the Word 
that may seem to have some bearing on the same ques- 
tion. 

The attempt to restrict the word day to any one mean- 
ing in Scripture must always prove a failure ; for it is 
used in several ways. Of this we have ample illustration 
in this very account of creation. Thus, it covers a cre- 
ative period, whatever that may be ; as in the phrase, 
" The evening and the morning were the first day." 



78 The Story of Creation. 

Then, as in Genesis i. 5, it simply embraces the period of 
light, whatever that may be ; for God called the light day ; 
and the darkness he called by quite another name. And 
to sum all up, the entire six creative epochs, whatever 
they may have been, are called a day, as in Genesis ii. 4, 
where we read, "These are the generations of the heavens 
and the earth when they were created, in the day that the 
Lord God made the earth and the heaven." So reads the 
record. A creative period is called a day ; a period of 
light is called a day ; and the whole six creative days 
are grouped in one, and called a day. Why should we 
restrict ourselves to a single use of this term, and 
that a very narrow and questionable one, when the nar- 
rative in which it occurs presents it with at least three 
meanings ? 

Another circumstance merits thoughtful attention. If 
the story in Genesis teaches that creation occurred in six 
solar days, it stands alone in that respect in all the Bible. 
The bearing of the Fourth Commandment upon the sub- 
ject will be discussed presently ; but leaving that out of 
view, we may safely challenge those who hold the solar- 
day theory to show a single passage in Holy Writ, subse- 
quent to this original history by Moses, that makes the 
slightest allusion to the views they hold. This is quite 
remarkable. Creation is a theme to which the sacred 
writers often recur, and on which they dwell at great 
length. The poetry of the Bible is especially full of it. 
In the book of Job there is a whole chapter devoted to it ; 
and in the Psalms and in Isaiah the wonderful theme is 
taken up again and again. But you look in vain in any 
of these writings for any hint of the six solar days. Such 



The Creative Day : Confirmatory. 79 

tremendous swiftness of action, on the part of the Al- 
mighty, as that would involve, would have been seized 
upon by any one of these writers when he was wrought 
up with his theme ; but not one of them seems to know 
that any such thing occurred. And if we go back again 
to Moses, he so tells his story that at any rate until the 
fourth day there is no possibility of reckoning by solar 
time ; for until that day there were neither sun nor stars 
to mark the passing hours. 

Moses, so far from measuring these days, leaves each 
one of them unfinished. He begins in each case with the 
"evening" out of which the day sprang, carries it up till 
its " morning " is well established, and leaves it there. 
He in no case continues his account of a day's work 
through to the end. He gives the partial darkness out of 
which it dawned, and speaks of the morning which con- 
stitutes the dawning, but he does not go on with it to the 
following evening in which it closes. So far as his narra- 
tive shows, these days may run on in part quite parallel, 
the one with the other. The second may begin before 
the first has ended ; and the third may begin before the 
second has closed. And we shall find, as we pursue this 
study further, that such was the case. As one man's life, 
which we call "his day," may overlap another man's life, 
which we call " his day," so one of these times of creation 
which we call a day may for a long time be parallel with 
another which we also call a day. One of them is started 
and sent forward ; and then another is started and sent 
forward side by side with it. And, for aught that appears 
in the narrative, the whole six days, though beginning 
successively, may have for ages moved on side by side, 



So The Story of Creation. 

the one keeping even pace with the other. The method 
of this movement mav be represented as follows : 

\ First day: the light. 

Second day: the firmament. 

Third day : dry land ; vegetation. 

-j Fourth day: sun, moon, stars. 



Fifth day: marine animals. 



Sixth day : mammals, man. 

The light-making begins, but is not completed till a 
firmament also begins ; and while the firmament is pre- 
paring, the dry land begins to appear, and vegetation to 
spring up. But both the upheaving of the dry land and 
the upspringing of vegetation are in process when the sun 
first shines on the earth ; and the creation of marine life 
begins almost immediately after vegetation appears, and 
a long time before all the new orders of vegetation are 
complete ; and so through to the end. The successive 
creations are successive only as to their "mornings," or 
their beginnings. One stands close behind the other ; 
and they are going on side by side at the same time. So 
Moses leaves it. He closes no day's work by saying, 
"Then came evening." He opens the morning, and then 
starts the next day at its side. 

On the solar-day hypothesis, what could we do with the 
first of these days ? The great proof-text on which that 
hypothesis rests is, "And the evening and the morning 
were the first day." That is, say those theorists, The pe- 
riod of darkness, or "evening," preceding, and the period 



The Creative Day: Confirmatory. 8i 

of light, or " morning," following, constituted the day. 
And as in a solar day there are but twenty-four hours, 
about twelve hours of darkness only could be reckoned 
into each day. But how was it with respect to this " day 
one " ? How long a time had darkness reigned before 
God said, Let there be light ? Had it been only about 
twelve hours ? Had the tohu and bohu continued only for 
that brief space of time ? What bold literalist has ever 
dared say as much as that ? When they begin to reckon 
the six days, they commonly assume that our planet was 
at the time a kind of wreck ; but on that supposition, how 
long had it been a wreck ? Only about twelve hours ? If 
not, then what becomes of the solar-day reckoning for 
this first day ? That day, according to these theorists, 
takes in the darkness preceding the first twelve hours of 
light ; and that darkness, as they themselves must allow, 
had endured for ages. Here, then, is a day, standing at 
the head of the whole series, that can by no contrivance 
be reduced to the proportions of mere clock time : the 
" evening " alone, which they reckon with it, was a long 
period ; and so the day itself was long. 

So we find it with the first day ; and if with that, who 
shall institute a new measurement for the second or the 
third. The fact is, that the solar-day hypothesis, ranked 
by its advocates as if it were above all the scriptural view 
of the case, breaks down at the very start. And what- 
ever else may be true, this is beyond question : that if 
the first day embraced the evening and the morning, it 
covered ages of duration, and was no mere twenty-four 

hours of solar time. 
11 



82 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XV. 

ARGUMENT FROM THE SEVENTH DAY. 

TT7E have seen how impossible it is to reckon the first 
* creative period as a solar day ; how will the case 

stand, if we take up the rest-period, the seventh day ? 
The six preceding days had each been characterized by 
what it brought forth. On each of these days God had 
performed some creative work. But this seventh day, in 
high distinction from the others, was marked as the day 
when God rested from all his work which he had created 
and made. Each of the work-days once begun was con- 
tinued for a time, the work continually going forward. 
Then came in the rest-period, when for a time creative 
energy was to be arrested, and no more new forms of 
matter or of life were to be brought forth. 

Well, so nearly as can now be ascertained, this rest- 
period was ushered in at least 6,000 years ago. Up to 
about that time, both in the vegetable and in the animal 
world, new forms of life were produced. But since that 
time, if any new genus or species, in either the animal 
kingdom or the vegetable world, has appeared upon our 
planet, the record has not been preserved. The work- 
days reached up to that point ; but then came in the rest- 
day. Since then God has rested from all his work which 



Argument from the Seventh Day. 83 

he created and made. Since that the rest-day, God's 
Sabbath, which is the great Seventh Day of the cosmog- 
onic week, has continued. That day has been at least 
6,000 years long ; perhaps much longer ; and for aught 
we can say, it may continue 600,000 years more. So the 
great week concludes as it began, with a day very much 
more than twenty-four hours long. As the first day of 
the seven, including both the evening and the morning, 
must have continued for ages, so the last day of the series 
must be reckoned by the same broad measure. And if 
the series begins and ends with a day that is so great, by 
what process of reasoning shall we apply the shorter 
reckoning of solar time to the five days that lie between ? 
It cannot be done. The attempt would involve an ab- 
surdity. 

It tends to strengthen this view of the case to observe 
that the seventh day embraced no period of darkness pre- 
ceding. For the first day there was an evening out of 
which the morning dawned ; and it was the same for the 
second day and for the third, and for each of the six on 
which creative work was done. That is, each of these 
days rose out of some remaining darkness, or chaos, which 
was reckoned the same thing. For each of these, the 
world lay unfinished yet. Something of chaos was still 
here ; and chaos, to a Hebrew mind, was always associated 
with night. But, as these days dawned one after another, 
the light shone brighter and brighter, until there stood be- 
fore the Almighty the grand spectacle of a finished world. 
Then creative power was arrested. Then the work-days 
all ran out, and the rest-day began. And this new morn- 
ing rose out of no chaos, or evening, but commenced with 



84 The Story of Creation. 

everything at broad noon-day. So, when the order was 
given to write the record, it was in effect this : Say not 
" there was evening and there was morning," now. This 
day begins under the full sunshine of a finished world ! 

People who " keep Saturday night " generally make 
great account of it that the Jewish Sabbath began at 
sunset ; and often quote the text, " The evening and the 
morning were the first day." But if we are to judge of 
our human Sabbath by the order of things on God's rest- 
day, we should say that it takes in no previous evening 
at all. The six work-days, indeed, each rose out of an 
evening ; but the rest-day did not ; and it is nowhere said 
in this story that the evening and the morning were the 
seventh day. 

There is one clause in the Fourth Commandment which 
we must not pass without notice. " In six days the Lord 
made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is." 
All that in them is — so says the Word. Well, there are 
some things in the earth, particularly in the rocks, the 
creation of which no man in his senses will assign to a 
week of six solar days. There are fossil remains of crea- 
tures which even the solar-day theorists admit must have 
been successively created during long ages. Their notion 
puts all such creations previous to the six days, and sup- 
poses the sacred writer to begin his story after those 
creations have passed. Not the fossil remains, they say. 
Moses gives no account of them, whatever. He only tells 
us how our world was reconstructed about 6,000 years 
ago. But, quite unfortunately for a class of people who 
pride themselves on holding Scripture to a literal con- 
struction, Moses says " heaven and earth, the sea, and all 



Argument from the Seventh Day. 85 

that in them is" This includes the fossils ; and if the 
six days' work included these, then it covered a good deal 
more than six days of solar time. 

There was an age when a crustacean creation prevailed ; 
and judging by the rocks deposited during that age, it 
extended over thousands of years. Then came the age 
of the fishes ; then that of the reptiles and the birds ; and 
still later the tertiary age, when we get the mammals and 
man. Along-side this creative day ran another in the 
vegetable world. The lower orders came first, and the 
earth brought forth grass. Following this came that over- 
whelming growth, the product of which is laid up in our 
coal-measures. And still later came the timber-trees, and 
fruit-trees needed for the use of man. The remains of 
all these successive creations lie to-day embedded in the 
rocks ; and to say that God made heaven and earth, the 
sea, and all that in them is, in six days, means that his six 
days extended down through all these ages. No one be- 
lieves that all this was done in six solar days. But that 
it was all done in God's six days is too plainly declared to 
be questioned. The solar-day theorists are very strict 
literalists in the interpretation : what will they do with 
the phrase, all that in them is ? 



86 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

OBJECTIONS. 

A S this view of the six days has not long been the 
common one, it is very natural that the question 
should be asked, Why was not all this discovered be- 
fore ? We never heard anything about six great crea- 
tive periods until the science of geology came out, when 
all at once people began to discover a new meaning in 
the Bible. This looks very much as if our interpretation 
had been contrived to meet an exigency. It seems not so 
much a result of the careful study of the Word as an in- 
vention to escape those difficulties with which we are 
pressed by men who have familiarized themselves with 
modern science. 

To this, however, it may be replied that a right inter- 
pretation of any portion of Scripture frequently depends 
very much upon the fact that particular attention has been 
called to it. And where there has been nothing especially 
to set us upon the study of a passage, we sometimes care- 
lessly give it an erroneous construction which at last be- 
comes traditional, and so passes down from age to age. 
Hundreds of illustrations of this statement might be given, 
and one of them comes in exactly here. The traditional 
interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis made these 



Objections. 87 

six creative periods solar days ; and, until there was some- 
thing to call attention to the subject, that view of the 
case generally prevailed. When, however, the science of 
geology was wrought out, and that view was challenged, 
scholars once more took up their Bibles and began to 
study ; and the more carefully they studied, the more 
thoroughly were they satisfied that the traditional inter- 
pretation was erroneous. We saw our mistake as soon 
as our attention was called to the subject. 

It is not true, however, that the views here presented 
are entirely modern. Questions of interpretation were 
started, with respect to these six days, nearly 1,500 
years ago. St. Augustine, less than 400 years after 
Christ, and of course long before any such thing as the 
science of geology was thought of, sat down to the study 
of this chapter, and, observing that three of those six days 
came before the creation of the sun, exclaimed, " What 
mean these days ; these strange sunless days ? " And 
until this time his question remains unanswered, as it is 
unanswerable, by those who regard all those days as 
measured by solar time. 

A stronger objection, however, is sometimes urged on 
the ground of geological science itself. It is set against 
the alleged number of these days, and may be stated as 
follows : " Do you say then that there were six creative 
epochs ? Has geology divided off this story of creation 
into exactly six equal parts ? Are the geologists even 
agreed among themselves, how many creations there were ; 
and do not some make it as many as thirty, while others 
reduce it to one, even if they allow that there was any 
creation at all ? " 



88 The Story of Creation. 

To this it may be answered, that with the exception of 
a few persons, represented by such names as that of Mr. 
Charles Darwin, geologists agree that the creative work 
extended over a long period, and embraced a large num- 
ber of successive creations. Very few indeed would un- 
dertake to say that there were just six creative acts ; and 
some might say there were sixty. But all will concede 
that the six days outlined by Moses are sufficiently com- 
prehensive to embrace the whole. The many creations 
indicated by geology admit of a sextuple grouping ; and 
that grouping, being convenient for the purpose of the 
narrative in Genesis, was adopted by the inspired writer. 
Had he chosen he might have made some other grouping, 
or have counted each creative act a day, and so have made 
no grouping at all ; but he chose another method. He 
took up the light-making process and called it one day. 
He took up the space-making process and called it another 
day. He took up the double process, the uplifting of the 
continents and the production of vegetable life, and called 
that another day. And so he went through to the end. 
This simplified the story ; and, in thus numbering the six 
days of God, he created for us a pattern for our human 
week, with its regularly recurring Sabbath ; and this has 
been found of great importance to our race. God grouped 
his great work into six great days in this story, as he wants 
man to group his lesser work into six lesser days, always 
to be followed by a day of rest. He might have given 
another number, both for his week and for ours. He 
might have given five, or ten, or twelve ; but six seemed 
to his wisdom the best. The sextuple grouping covers the 
ground. The sextuple grouping creates our week. And 



Objections. 89 

if any other grouping had been made, it would have been 
open to the same objections that are alleged against the 
grouping as we now have it. It was as well to put the 
picture in a frame with six sides as to set it in any other 
way. 

The difficulty found in the relation of this view to the 
Fourth Commandment has already been substantially dis- 
posed of. God's days in that commandment are one thing : 
man's are another. The days of his creative work are like 
himself, broad, deep, immeasurable. Man's days there 
spoken of are like himself, narrow, limited, one succeed- 
ing another, and the same repeating itself many times. 
And the argument of the Sabbath law is this : God the 
Creator wrought upon his work through six great days, 
and then rested. In like manner, let man in his lowlier 
sphere have six days of toil to one of Sabbath rest. He 
will find it in every way best for him. He will be more 
prosperous in his worldly affairs ; and he will secure the 
time he needs to think about the world to come. 

Here with entire confidence may we rest the case. On 
this interpretation we can safely take our stand. The 
science of geology may be greatly modified, or may even 
be quite driven out from the world. But the interpreta- 
tion of the first chapter of Genesis can never be put back 
where it was before attention was called to the study of 
the creative day. Not because any exigency has forced 
the interpretation upon us ; not as a contrivance to escape 
a difficulty in which the " obvious meaning " of the pas- 
sage involves us ; but because, irrespective of every other 
consideration, our study of the Word brings us to this 
conclusion, we declare that the word "day" in the first 
12 



90 The Story of Creation. 

chapter of Genesis can not be limited to a period of 
twenty-four hours clock-time ; and that the six creative 
periods there indicated are not six solar days. Geology, 
however, is not likely to be driven out of the world nor 
greatly modified ; and as the science shall be better un- 
derstood, and the Bible more carefully interpreted, we 
shall find that the two records are in perfect agreement. 



The Firmament. 



9i 



CHAPTER XVII. 



THE FIRMAMENT. 



[*T may be fairly questioned whether the distinction we 
make between the operation of natural causes, and the 
exercise of the divine power, is not based upon an error. 
For in the last analysis every operation of nature resolves 
itself into "the act of God." Thus, we have no better 
way to account for the fact that the sun attracts the earth, 
or that the earth attracts the moon, than to say, " God 
wills it." We may call the sun a magnet, and the earth 
a lesser magnet ; but that explains nothing ; for we have 
yet the questions to ask (1), How came it to be a magnet ? 
and (2), Why does a magnet attract ? So of the law of 
crystallization ; so of chemical affinity ; so of the vital 
principle ; all these rest primarily upon the will of the 
Creator ; and so, all the natural effects of the interplay 
of these laws may properly be ascribed to God. Never- 
theless, it is convenient to distinguish between God's 
action through second causes, and his action without such 
cause ; and so we call the one nature and the other the 
supernatural. 

And if such a distinction is admissible at all, it cer- 
tainly has a place in the present discussion. For the 
work of creation, as represented by Moses, though ordered 



92 The Story of Creation. 

entirely of God, yet appears also, in no small part, as 
occurring under natural law. As to certain particulars, 
indeed, that work stands entirely within the sphere of the 
supernatural, and is best described by saying in bold, 
strong terms, God did it. As to other parts of that work, 
it was just as plainly a simple operation of nature, and is 
an act of God only as the sending of the rain upon the 
earth, or the growing of the grass upon the mountains, is 
also the work of his hand. 

We have observed this already. The origin of the uni- 
verse was by direct act of God. In the beginning, he 
produced the cosmic matter, of which the worlds were 
made. This occurred by no process of nature ; for nature 
had not yet been framed. And so was it when the Spirit 
of God moved upon the face of the waters, and this dead 
mass was impregnated with life and made to give forth 
light. But when once this matter had been created, and 
those laws had been established which we now observe, 
very much of what followed would be a matter of course. 
God would still be the doer of it, indeed but only as 
having set in motion a train of causes which produced 
the result. 

It is a pity this had not been better understood ; for 
just at this point have occurred some of the sharpest of 
those conflicts between Science and Religion, which are 
one of the special features of our times. The naturalist 
discovers that certain things, which we have always been 
accustomed to ascribe to the direct interposition of divine 
power, have been simply the ordinary ongoings of nature ; 
and lo, we turn around and call him an infidel. The rain 
is no miracle, he says : it comes by the natural process 



The Firmament. 93 



of distillation. The thunder is nothing supernatural : it 
is all traceable to the electric fluid. And we lift up our 
Bible and declare that it is not so. Quite naturally, he 
retorts upon us, " Then your Bible is not true ; and, if 
you will have it so, infidel I am." So the quarrel goes 
on ; whereas, everything might easily be adjusted, if we 
would come to a proper understanding of terms. 

It is a peculiarity of the Bible to show us God in every- 
thing. He bringeth forth Mazzaroth in his seasons. He 
guideth Arcturus and his sons. He sendeth his rain 
upon the just and upon the unjust. And when the thun- 
der roars, " The voice of the Lord is upon the waters." 
All this is ascribed to him as distinctly as is the dividing 
of, the Red Sea for Israel to pass over, or the calling up 
of Lazarus from his sleep in the grave. Nature and the 
supernatural are here all blended in one. And, in this 
history of creation, as elsewhere, things are again and 
again ascribed to him, which were as clearly an operation 
of nature as is the rising of the sun. 

We have this illustrated in the work of the second cre- 
ative day. On that day the firmament was made. It 
was the work of God's own hand. But whether it were 
created by a divine interposition, producing results which 
nature never would have caused, or whether it were 
wrought out under natural law, the record does not decide. 
As we carefully study the subject, we shall perhaps be 
disposed to say that the firmament was made in the second 
of these two ways ; and so, perhaps, we shall be able to 
give a natural history of this work, showing how it all 
came about ; but none the less is it a work of God. That 
is the way God generally works. Interruptions and inter- 



94 The Story of Creation. 

positions are the exception, not the rule. They constitute 
miracles and supernatural occurrences ; but for the most 
part God does his pleasure without in any way disturbing 
natural law. We shall understand the case better, how- 
ever, if we pause for a moment and inquire again into the 
meaning of the terms we employ. 

God made the firmament: what was it? The word is 
rendered in the Septuagint by the Greek term, stereoma, 
which signifies something firm or solid ; showing that the 
translators supposed the firmament to be a solid thing. 
In the Latin Vulgate the word is rendered firmamentum ; 
showing that the same idea still prevailed. And our 
English translators, almost literally copying the Vulgate, 
wrote for us the word firmament, showing that they also 
regarded the product of this second day's work as a solid 
thing. In this they simply accepted a very prevalent 
view. The idea was very generally entertained that the 
sky formed a solid vault above the earth ; or, rather, that 
the sky above and that below formed a kind of double 
vault or hollow solid sphere, in the centre of which stood 
our world, and beyond which was the heaven of the gods. 
All these several translations of the Bible were colored 
by that view. When Moses spake of the sky, the suppo- 
sition was that he referred to a solid vault ; and so they 
translated it "solid vault." But when we come to ask for 
the term he uses, we find it to have no such meaning. 
He does not say stereoma, nor firmamentum, but rakiak, 
which is a Hebrew term derived from the verb raka> to 
expand. His translators, prepossessed with the idea that 
the sky was a solid vault, called it by that name ; but 
Moses simply called it an expanse. 



The Firmament. - 95 



A very remarkable circumstance, this ! Had Moses, in 
writing his book, been left entirely to the guidance of his 
own mind, he would inevitably have been led into the 
same error that his translators committed after him. He 
would have taken up the common conception of the solid 
vault above us, just as they did ; and would have used a 
term expressing it. What kept him from doing so ? How 
happened this man, living in times the most primitive, to 
rise above the error of men who lived at so much later a 
day ? How came he to choose the very term which would 
express the facts in the case, while his translators, with 
the record as he made it, all before them, were so prepos- 
sessed with a false science that they blundered, mistrans- 
lated, and used a term indicating that the sky was solid ? 
How came he, in an age when no man knew what the sky 
was, to use such a carefully-chosen word in describing it, 
that when modern science should make its last discovery 
in this direction, we should come right back to the lan- 
guage he employed ? This, in the language of Professor 
Waring, in his recent able treatise on this chapter, is 
" The Miracle of To-day." 



g6 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



SPACE - MAKING. 



TF the nebular hypothesis be accepted, we must believe 
that the time came at length when the original mass 
broke up and formed a large number of detached nebulae. 
One of these nebulae was subdivided, and formed those 
stars which combine to compose the Milky Way ; one of 
these stars being our own sun. Others of these nebulas, 
some already formed into stars, but too distant from us to 
appear as such except by means of the most powerful 
glasses, others only in process of forming stars, are seen 
in the outlying regions of space. The detached mass 
with which we stand connected thus became a thing by 
itself. It lay in its place, an immense disk or wheel, the 
general outline of which may still be traced in the ar- 
rangement of the stars forming the Milky Way. But the 
qualities imparted to it, and the motions generated in it 
when the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, 
were such as slowly to gather it about numerous centres, 
and thus to break it up into smaller fragments, from one 
of which our solar system was evolved. It was divided. 
Broad open spaces now existed where heretofore the one 
broad vaporous mass had been. 

That fragment which formed our solar system filled all 



Space -making. • 97 



the space now marked by the planets in their journey 
round the sun. That is, it extended outward so as not 
only to include the remote orbit of Neptune, but far, far 
beyond. And as the great disk whirled more and more 
rapidly, in proportion as it cooled and shrank, it threw off 
at last from its outer rim a ring of vapor. This ring at 
last broke, and rolled itself into a huge vaporous ball, 
which at last became a solid globe. This was the first 
planet of the system. Then an inner ring was thrown off 
*and another planet was born. And then there was an- 
other, and another, till at last the whole train was created 
and in the centre blazed the sun. It was a space-making 
era. God was creating an expanse. And, if Moses in 
vision saw this work going forward, and the world 
a-making, in what better terms could he describe it than 
to say, "And God said, Let there be an expanse in the 
midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the 
waters ; and it was so." 

Professor Guyot* says, " The central idea of this day's 
work is division or separation. The vast primitive nebula 
of the first day breaks up into multitudes of gaseous 
masses ; and these are concentrated into stars. Motion 
is everywhere. Gravitation and chemical forces tend to 
concentrate matter around various centres, and then to 
isolate them from each other. Centrifugal force tends to 
disperse them. Under the law of the forces of matter 
and motion, established by God himself, and under his 
guidance, those numberless bodies of all forms and sizes, 
which fill the space and adorn our heavens, combine into 

* See his admirable paper read before the Evangelical Alliance in New 
York. 

13 



98 The Story of Creation. 

those worlds and groups of worlds, whose wonderful or- 
ganization it is the province of astronomy to discover. It 
is premature to say that this noble science has as yet fur- 
nished us a satisfactory history of the generation of the 
starry heavens, and of their real structure ; but much has 
been done toward it. In the genesis of our system, as 
explained by the genius of Laplace, and submitted by 
Alexander to exhaustive calculation, the result of which 
amounts to a demonstration of its truth, we see one of the 
processes by which has taken place the separation of indi- 
vidual planets from a vast central body, holding them in 
bondage in their orbits by the power of its mass. In the 
twin stars revolving round a common centre of gravity, 
we perceive the effect produced when the masses are more 
nearly equal. In the nebulous stars of all grades, we follow 
the gradual concentration from a gaseous state to a com- 
pact and well-defined body. In the great spiral nebulae dis- 
covered by Lord Rosse, we behold the actual breaking up 
of a world of stars of all sizes and brilliancy, and witness 
the very process of their dispersion through space by cen- 
trifugal force, along paths they are never to retrace." 

Such is the nebular hypothesis, as expounded by this 
distinguished Christian scholar ; and he concludes a sub- 
sequent paragraph by saying, "One fact recognized by 
all is the work of separation, of individualization, which 
must have preceded the present combination of the heav- 
enly bodies, and is indicated as the special work of the 
second cosmogonic day." 

Whether we can be perfectly certain that it was just 
this space-making to which Moses referred, when he said, 
" God made the rakiah," or not, this we can at once per- 



Space -making. 99 



ceive : that if he had this epoch in view, he describes it 
in quite fitting terms, and sets it in the right place. The 
primitive nebula first receives motion, and then becomes 
luminous. As the next step in the process it breaks up 
into separate masses with broad spaces between. If Moses 
beheld these things in his vision, this part of the process 
would particularly attract his attention. Those great lu- 
minous patches in his outlook rapidly assume regular form. 
The huge disks spin round, each on its bright centre. 
Rings of bright vapor fly off and rapidly form into worlds. 
The suns blaze. The planets sweep round in their orbits 
and their satellites move on in their lesser spheres. Where 
the fire-mist was just now diffused, stars begin to twinkle. 
Where the light was but faint, great fires now kindle, in 
the light and heat of which the planets bask as they pur- 
sue their way. Golden beads are strung along the open 
spaces ; and looking out between, vastness opens too deep 
to be penetrated by even the assisted gaze of this man of 
God. 

If this was the second day, what a sublime day it was. 
Not the creation of light itself, commonly referred to as 
the grandest part of this great work, could compare with 
it ; for it was the light concentrating, intensifying, and 
ranging itself in forms the most curious, and in an order 
so beautiful that the wonder is renewed every time we 
turn our eyes toward the richly garnished heavens. 



ioo The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

ANOTHER VIEW : THE ATMOSPHERE. 

r I ^HE objection that scientific men have raised against 
the story of creation as given by Moses is, that 
there is nothing in the actual history of creation to cor- 
respond with it. But, as we go on with these studies, we 
shall find it our difficulty, not so much to discover some- 
thing in nature that matches the story, but to determine 
among several things which one at certain points will 
match it, and which to seize upon as the real parallel. At 
several places the narrative is so constructed as to adjust 
itself to either one of several periods in the creative work. 

Such is the case peculiarly with this account of the 
second cosmo^onic day. What Moses records on that 
subject describes almost equally well either one of two 
great chapters in the history of creation. We have seen 
how it describes the space-making era. Let us now mark 
it as descriptive of the creation of our atmosphere. 

To reach this date we must make a rapid flight, down 
from the time of those separations in the great nebula, 
just described, and take our stand upon our planet, after 
it has become a solid globe. It is the time when the 
world is covered with water, and when it is wrapped in 
dense clouds. The great storm-period has passed ; but 



Another View : the Atmosphere. ioi 

the vapors still hang low and dark along the surface of the 
universal ocean. The sun is blazing ; but its light can not 
penetrate those heavy layers of vapor which lie piled one 
above another, from the surface of the earth to the pres- 
ent aerial regions. Darkness is upon the face of the deep ; 
and the vaporous masses and the waters of the ocean mix 
and mingle together. 

Slowly and faintly these vapors grow less dense, and the 
light struggles in. It is but a dim, uncertain light, how- 
ever, and only sufficient to show how waste and desolate 
a thing is this great world. The clouds and fog-banks 
must be uplifted. The dark heavy masses must be cleared 
away. And we must have an open atmosphere. How 
perfectly adjusted to this process is the story of the sec- 
ond day ! And God said, Let there be an expanse in the 
midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the 
waters. And God made the expanse, and divided the 
waters which were under the expanse from the waters 
which were above the expanse ; and it was so. The cre- 
ation of the firmament, thus understood, would be the 
creation of the atmosphere of our globe ; and the word 
"creation" would have to be understood in the sense of 
"dividing" those elements which compose it from those 
other elements which were confusedly commingled with 
it, and combining them in such proportions as would con- 
stitute a transparent aerial envelope for our planet. 

The atmosphere, as we now have it, is made up of two 
gases. The principal one of these, oxygen, is a life- 
power; but being of too intense a nature, it is diluted 
with nitrogen, as one would dilute a cup of tea, which was 
too strong, with water. To this a third element, carbonic 



102 The Story of Creation. 

acid gas, is added ; but at present it exists only in small 
quantities. It is a poisonous ingredient, to all air-breath- 
ing animals, though quite important to the growth of 
plants ; and were it in the atmosphere in any great quan- 
tity, it would be fatal to human life. 

In the earlier stages of creative history, as will be more 
fully shown hereafter, carbonic acid gas existed in im- 
mensely greater quantities than now ; so that when our 
atmosphere was first cleansed of the mists and clouds that 
darkened it, no air-breathing creature could have inhaled 
it without instant death. And it curiously corresponds 
with this circumstance, as noted by Professor Waring, that 
when this second day's work was completed the usual 
formula, " And God saw that it was good," is omitted. 
Such an atmosphere was not yet good. 

In process of time, however, this noxious element 
was taken up ; and the rakiah was perfectly adjusted to 
the wants of man. By a curious process, hereafter to be 
noticed, this carbonic acid gas was consolidated into the 
most beneficial substances, and so was got out from the 
atmosphere, except the harmless amount that still remains 
to nourish vegetation. And now the great aerial ocean 
stands pure and perfect from the lowest valleys up to the 
tops of the mountains. The ocean of water covers about 
three-quarters of our globe ; but this atmospheric ocean 
bathes both sea and land. The ocean of water has an 
average depth of about three miles ; but the atmospheric 
ocean has a depth of at least forty-five miles. The 
ocean of water, however, greatly outweighs that of the 
atmosphere ; and a column of the former, thirty-three 
feet high, will balance a column of the latter of the entire 



Another View : the Atmosphere. 103 

altitude of forty-five miles. Moreover, the ocean of water 
is more habitable than the other, its finny people dwelling 
in it to the very top, and in their rapid movements some- 
times leaping out of it; while our atmospheric ocean is 
habitable only in its lowest parts, and should we by any 
means be lifted half way to the top we should but give a 
gasp or two and perish. The point where life is most in- 
tense in these two oceans is, however, where the one joins 
the other. In the deep sea soundings there is little more 
of life than in the upper strata of our atmosphere. In 
the upper waters of the sea, and in the lower regions of 
the air, there alone do we find animal or vegetable life in 
its best condition. It is a very narrow limit to which it is 
confined — just where earth and air come together. 

The reason we can not live at greater elevations in our 
atmosphere is because of its extreme elasticity and tenuity. 
The attraction of the earth pulls it down upon us ; and 
the upper air pressing on the lower condenses it at the 
bottom sufficiently for purposes of respiration. As we go 
upward, however, it becomes lighter and thinner. At the 
height of three miles, both man and beast find breathing 
difficult, and exertion painful. At the height of seven or 
eight miles, life can not be sustained for any great length 
of time. The most conclusive experiment perhaps that 
was ever made, in seeking to reach great aerial elevations, 
was that of Messrs. Glaisher and Coxwell, who made a 
balloon ascension from Wolverhampton on the 5 th day of 
September, 1852, and who reached the utmost limits at 
which life could be sustained. At an elevation of 19,000 
feet Mr. Coxwell was panting for breath. At the height ' 
of 29,000 feet Mr. Glaisher's eyesight began to fail ; and 



104 The Story of Creation. 

shortly after he found his hands and arms powerless. 
" Then," he says, " I tried to shake myself, but seemed to 
have no limbs. In looking at the barometer my head 
fell over my left shoulder. I struggled and shook my 
body again but could not move my arms. Getting my 
head upright for an instant it fell over on my right shoul- 
der. Then I fell backward, my arm resting against the 
side of the car and mv head on its edsre. I endeavored 
to speak, but I could not. In an instant intense dark- 
ness came over me. I thought I had been seized with 
asphyxia, and believed I should experience nothing more, 
as death would come unless we speedily descended. 
Other thoughts were entering my mind when I suddenly 
became unconscious as one going to sleep." Mr. Glaisher 
supposes that they reached a height of about 36,000 or 
37,000 feet. It is quite certain that they did not reach 
a height of above seven miles ; and quite possibly it was 
less than six. But it was only by Mr. Coxwell seizing 
the valve cord in his teeth, and pulling it after his hands 
had become useless, and thus effecting a rapid descent, 
that either one of these daring voyagers escaped death.* 
An important thing was it for our world when God gave 
it an atmosphere ; but in thaUas in everything else he 
makes us keep our place. We are lowly creatures yet. 
We can not soar very far. But by and by, if God please, 
we shall gain other faculties, and travel through far other 
regions in space : Per aspera ad astra, — through the 
rough places up to the stars. 

* " Aerial World," page 12. 



The Uses of the Atmosphere. 105 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE USES OF THE ATMOSPHERE. 

■ EVERYTHING for a purpose: such is the law of 
God's working ; and the purpose for which he pre- 
pared the expanse is indicated in the words, "And let 
it divide the waters from the waters." Nothing is said 
here of the immediate relation of this expanse to human 
life ; for as yet such life has not appeared. Things are 
gradually preparing for it, however, and the forming of 
the expanse is one step in the general preparation. The 
waters must be divided from the waters. And this, taking 
the view indicated in Chapter XIX., makes the second 
day an epoch marked by the passing away of the great 
storms which have prevailed, and by the ushering in of 
pleasant weather. 

On a small scale we have the same process repeated in 
those atmospheric changes which still prevail. A thunder- 
cloud darkens the earth and pours down a deluge ; and in 
an hour the skies are bright again. Thick fog-banks 
obscure the landscape and lie low along the seas ; but 
directly the wind springs up from a clearing quarter, and 
at once the whole scene is changed. If Moses saw such 
changes as this occurring on that broad scale that meas- 
ures everything he here describes, we need not wonder 
14 



106 The Story of Creation. 

that the glad vision arrested his attention, and found place 
in the record he was preparing. 

How desolate a scene this world must have presented 
before these changes occurred ! We may form some idea 
of it by the cloud and darkness that, even yet, sometimes 
gather in our sky. Egypt was once wrapped in such a 
darkness for three days ; and in places like London and 
Glasgow scarcely a year goes by but there is at least one 
day when a dense mist settles down upon the scene, turn- 
ing day into night. A London fog is a phenomenon of 
world-wide celebrity ; and sometimes it becomes a very 
serious matter. From the 8th to the 14th of December, 
1873, according to an account published in the "Aerial 
World," that city was wrapped in a mist so* dark that it 
entirely stopped the traffic on the river, and compelled 
the suspension of business at the docks. On the 12th, 
about noon, the veil was lifted a little, so that objects 
could be indistinctly perceived at the distance of a few 
paces, but it soon grew dark again. The gas-lights could 
not be seen along the streets, and the few cabs and omni- 
buses that ventured out had to be escorted by torch- 
bearers, and could only move step by step. It was a 
darkness that might be felt. It became dangerous to 
move about, and several lives were lost. Much the same 
experience is sometimes had in Glasgow, where the street 
lights have been known to be kept burning day and night 
for a week at a time. On the Banks of Newfoundland 
the fogs constitute one of the greatest perils of the navi- 
gator ; and among the Alps the mists that sometimes 
sweep down upon the bewildered traveler are full of dan- 
ger. This may illustrate the condition of our planet 



The Uses of the Atmosphere. 107 

when the call was made for the second day. This was a 
world wrapped in a London fog ; and this call was to 
lift the mists into the upper air, and to open an expanse 
between those luminous, feathery masses still floating in 
the sky and the tossing ocean that crested its green waves 
with white foam below. 

This was one use of the expanse. It constituted an 
open space in which, when man appeared, he could live 
and move and have being. It divided the waters that were 
under the firmament from the waters that were above the 
firmament ; and it was so. 

But this was not all. Many uses for one thing, is God's 
order ; and when once our race arrived upon the scene, 
various benefits, derivable from this source, were apparent, 
which would not be so likely to suggest themselves to one 
who simply witnessed the process of creation. Man was 
to have a sense of hearing ; and through this sense he 
was to gain whatever is valuable in the gift of speech and 
whatever is beautiful in the combinations of musical 
sound. But had there been no atmosphere there could 
have been no sound. A clock may be made to strike 
under a glass receiver from which the air has been ex- 
hausted ; and though you can see the motion, you can 
hear nothing. In our moon, which has no atmosphere, 
even the outbursting of a volcano would occur in utter 
silence. Had it been possible to live in a world thus 
arranged, we should have been a race of deaf-mutes, 
neither hearing nor capable of producing sound. 

But neither is this all. The atmosphere is of use to 
keep these bodies in proper shape and proportion. From 
within every human body there are forces stronger than 



io8 The Story of Creation. 

we know, pushing outward. The fluids and gases that go 
so largely toward making up the system have a powerful 
distending quality ; and it is only because the atmosphere 
presses in upon us in all directions from without, that the 
human frame is not distorted and life destroyed. It takes 
about fourteen pounds of this hard pushing against every 
square inch of surface to keep us in present shape. We 
are not conscious of the pressure, because it is so nicely 
balanced ; but the fact is easily demonstrated. 

It would also be proper here to mention those uses of 
the atmosphere in which it ministers to the sense of smell. 
This sense is commonly reckoned low among the faculties, 
but it has some very important offices to serve ; nor is its 
ministry wanting in what is delicate and refined. The 
keen scent of the greyhound is a most extraordinary en- 
dowment ; and by the same faculty many of the lower 
animals are able to elude their enemies or pursue their 
prey. God most beautifully ministers to this faculty 
in man, though we possess it in but a moderate degree, 
by floating to us on the atmosphere the various fragrance 
of ripe fruit and open flower. On the 8th day of April, 
1872, the writer landed at the port of Joppa in Syria. 
While the ship was at anchor two miles off the coast, we 
were greeted with a very sweet perfume. The morning 
was bright, and the wind was lightly drifting toward us 
from the shore, and the fragrance of the orange orchards, 
at that season not only in bloom but full of ripe fruit, was 
borne to us as our first welcome to the land on which our 
Saviour once trod. Captain Thompson, of the steamer 
Trinacria, told us that he had detected a similar fragrance 
in passing a fruit-ship on the Mediterranean, at a distance 



The Uses of the Atmosphere. 109 

of twelve miles. The perfume was taken up and borne 
all that distance through the air. 

Chief among the uses of the atmosphere, however, 
stands the use of respiration. God intended to stock this 
world with breathing animals, and for such animals air is 
a necessity. Man stands chief among these creatures, 
and without an atmosphere would immediately gasp and 
die. The office of respiration is two-fold — to purify the 
blood and to build up the system. The blood, as it comes 
in toward the heart from the extremities, comes very im- 
pure. Its color is purple, in some parts of the system 
almost black ; and there is mingled with it a great excess 
of carbonic acid. A pump-stroke at the heart, however, 
sends it to the lungs, where it is spread over an immense 
surface. Then the lungs heave and in comes a chest full 
of air. It touches the blood, penetrating the thin mem- 
brane which holds it. The blood drinks in the oxygen 
which the air contains, and throws out, in exchange for it, 
the excess of carbonic acid. Another pump-stroke, and 
the blood from the lungs, now no longer black, but of a 
bright red color, is sent out through the arteries. It 
reaches the extremities. It deposits the oxygen there, 
taking up once more a load of carbonic acid and carrying 
it to the heart. Then it goes to the lungs again, then is 
aerated once more, and then again is sent out to build up 
the tissues. This is respiration. With each breath of 
air we take in this oxygen. We get it not in a pure state, 
but diluted with nitrogen, so that it may not do its work 
too fiercely. And, as the life element comes in, the heart 
throbs and sends the poor, dark, venous blood up to the 
lungs to meet it. The carbonic acid goes out. The oxy- 



no The Story of Creation. 

gen comes in. The blood grows suddenly bright, as if 
receiving a new life-principle, and then another heart- 
throb sends it coursing to its destination all over the 
system. Moment by moment, these two engines, heart 
and lungs, keep up their piston-strokes and valve-move- 
ments. They work on when we are least thinking of it. 
They do not stop even when we sleep. The lungs heave, 
the heart pumps, the oxygen comes in and the carbonic 
acid goes out, and so we live. 

It was once supposed that something of the nature of 
combustion occurred at the lungs, and that this was the 
source of animal heat. This was the theory of Lavoisier, 
who first discovered these changes ; and, with some modi- 
fications, the same view was taken up by Liebig. Later 
and more accurate researches, however, as stated by Pro- 
fessor Dalton, have exploded that theory, and animal heat 
is assigned rather to certain chemical changes going for- 
ward in all parts of the system. Nevertheless, it stands 
closely connected with respiration, as is seen in the fact 
that it is greatest in air-breathing animals ; and greatest 
among these in proportion as the creatures' lungs are of 
great size and of perfect formation. 

Certainly respiration is of the utmost importance. We 
talk of bread as the staff of life, but it bears no compari- 
son in that respect with oxygen. A man can live without 
food for days together ; but he cannot live without air for 
an hour. " The breath of life," the Bible calls it ; and 
the reservoir from which it is drawn is this great crystal 
ocean that everywhere floods our globe. 



The Atmosphere as a Water-carrier. hi 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE ATMOSPHERE AS A WATER-CARRIER. 

\X 7"E have a sign in the zodiac, and a constellation in 
the starry heavens, known as Aquarius, or the 
water-carrier. And we might with some propriety apply 
the same name to our atmosphere. For, that work of 
" dividing " the waters which it began on the second cos- 
mogonic day involves the transportation of water in im- 
mense quantities, and to great distances across our planet 
That work is still kept up and prosecuted with an en- 
ergy and a continuity worthy of all admiration. We 
have looked upon this atmosphere as the material for res- 
piration : let us look upon it in this chapter as the great 
agent in irrigating the continents, and so fitting them for 
the production of vegetation. 

To water the earth is a work which, considered from a 
mere human view, might be said to involve some difficulty. 
The oceans indeed furnish an abundant supply of the ma- 
terial ; but it is so impregnated with salt as to be unfit for 
use, and the continents are widespread and uplifted. The 
problem is to take up a sufficient quantity of that water, 
to free it from the salt, and to transport it often for thou- 
sands of miles so as to send it down where it is needed. 
How can this be done ? 



ii2 The Story of Creation. 

The work of supplying a city with water, though it be 
only from a distance of perhaps twenty-five miles, some- 
times quite taxes our engineering skill, and involves an 
expenditure suggesting taxes of another sort. The Ro- 
mans built aqueducts for such purposes, carrying water 
by slow descent across vast stretches of country, and 
keeping up the level over all the deep valleys, because 
they did not know that water could be conveyed by means 
of pipes down into a valley and up out of it again. King 
Solomon, in his wisdom, used a curious cement pipe for 
this purpose, taking the water from his pools, six miles 
away, to the Temple ; but even he was so ignorant of hy- 
drostatics as to wind his levels around the hills, instead of 
making a short cut down through the valleys and up out 
of them. Even at the present day, the question of water- 
supply often becomes a serious one. 

In the case now before us, however, we have the propo- 
sition not merely to supply a great city but all the conti- 
nents ; and we must distil the water so as to get rid of the 
salt ; and we must raise it so as to reach all the uplands ; 
and we must furnish it in quantities sufficient not only for 
drinking purposes, but for irrigation. We must fill the 
springs with it, as they gush from the hills. We must 
pour it along the mighty river channels, and float the 
ships upon it. We must spread it out in broad lakes that 
are themselves like seas. How can it be done ? 

This was one of the problems to be solved in the pro- 
cess of world-making. And it was solved in the following 
manner. In the first place, the water was so constituted 
as to have a constant tendency to evaporization. That is, 
wherever it was exposed to the air, it should be evermore 



The Atmosphere as a . Water - carrier. 113 

changing to vapor ; and in the next place this vapor was 
to be taken up by the air and carried from place to place. 
A wet handkerchief hung in the open air soon becomes 
dry. That is, the water that is in it changes to an in- 
visible vapor and is carried away. What is done in the 
case of -the handkerchief occurs wherever there is a spot 
of moist earth, or wherever there is water in any way ex- 
posed to the air. All along the streams, all across the 
lakes, and above all upon the broad surface of the great 
seas, the water is in perpetual process of rapid evapora- 
tion. The product is invisible, but it is none the less 
real ; and the atmosphere takes it up, as a great sponge 
soaks up fluids, until it can hold no more. 

Then comes in another arrangement. The air is in 
constant motion. Here a current sets toward the west ; 
next a current sets toward the east. The wind is north 
to-day, and to-morrow it is south ; and so these treasures 
of moisture are carried all over the world. When this 
vapor is carried into a cold place, the air is condensed, 
and parts with a portion of its moisture which falls in rain. 
The great sponge is squeezed and the water is pressed 
out of it. What is pressed out falls upon the fields and 
fills the springs. This is nature's arrangement for water- 
supply; and it works as by a kind of perpetual motion, 
from age to age. 

The amount of work thus done is enormous. We speak 

of the tremendous forces that must have been at work in 

the upheaval of those great mountain chains which mark 

our globe; but that work is every year outdone, by the 

uplifting of these masses of water and conveying them 

across the earth. Tons of moisture are taken up from 
15 



H4 The Story of Creation. 

every acre of wet meadow and low swamp-land every 
twenty-four hours. The process is indeed more rapid 
during the warm season of the year ; but as your wet 
handkerchief hung out in winter will "freeze dry," so the 
process of evaporization still goes forward even when the 
earth is robed in snow and ice. And so it happens, that 
along all the atmospheric currents the moisture is being 
borne to the places where it is needed. 

Rev. Wm. Arnot, of Edinburgh, in his little volume 
called " The Present World," seizes this thought and makes 
a prose poem of it. u Look up into these clouds," he says, 
" these great water-carriers for the world. How joyously 
and jauntily they career along ! The huge masses skip 
and whirl and chase each other like lambs at play, neither 
wearied with the weight they bear nor dizzied by the long 
look-down. Here for once is perfect engineering applied 
to water-supply. No retaining walls are needed, and no 
windings to maintain a level. How softly they lie ; how 
quickly they move ; how gently they fall where they are 
needed, and when ! You are awakened out of your first 
sleep by a rattling in the casement and a rumbling in the 
chimney. You rise and look out on the moonlit sky : the 
cause of the nocturnal commotion is discoverable at a 
glance. An interminable line of laden clouds, like a lug- 
gage-train, every wagon heaped far above its brim, is spin- 
ning eastward through the sky, from the Atlantic to the 
dry table-lands on the confines of Europe and Asia. 
Those thirsty regions have telegraphed by electricity 
through the air, most probably, to their correspondent in 
the western waters, that the Caspian and Dead Seas are 
in danger of becoming dry. The correspondent, ever 



The Atmosphere as a Water-carrier. 115 

watchful, and having withal a large stock in hand, newly 
distilled from the Atlantic, immediately dispatches an ex- 
traordinary night-train, with orders to run express all the 
way ; ' for the King's business requireth haste ! ' There 
it goes, frightfully quick, and with an infinity of imposing 
sound. But you may perceive it is running on the main 
line ; the axles are well greased, and the switches are all 
right ; you tumble into bed again by way of shunting into 
a siding, and sleep soundly till morning, confident that no 
collision will take place." 

The same delightful author tells us how he once caught 
nature in the very act of cloud-making, the circumstances 
being such that the usually invisible vapor could be plainly 
seen. He says : " Detained two days in Brieg, in the 
valley of the upper Rhone, I had no other employment 
than to climb the mountains on the one side, and thence 
to gaze upon the mountains on the other. A huge basin 
on the summit was full of ice and snow, and the sun of 
September beamed down mightily upon the accumulated 
mass. From the heated cauldron a small column of pure 
white mist rose to a considerable height, and then spread 
out like a flower on its stalk, until a puff of wind came, 
and carried the bundle of the manufactured article away 
through the atmosphere, to a large bank of cloud that was 
1 lying to ' in the neighborhood, like a ship at sea. The 
process was repeated at intervals of ten minutes, and as 
each portion of newly-made cloud was turned out of the 
factory, it was sent on the wings of the wind directly to 
the store." 

This process is continually going on, though few of us 
ever have so good an opportunity as did Mr. Arnot to 



n6 The Story of Creation. 

witness it, and fewer still could describe it in language so 
beautiful were the sight to be afforded us. All over the 
moist lands, all along the streams and across the lakes and 
ponds, and all abroad over the deep and wide sea, the 
waters are being " divided," and a portion is being borne 
away to "water the earth." The rain that fell last night 
was distilled for us in that steaming cauldron which gives 
us so large a portion of our water-supply — the Gulf of 
Mexico. The next that falls will be sent us perhaps from 
the north-eastern Atlantic ; and the next in a thunder- 
gust brewed upon the great lakes of the north-west. The 
clouds sail across the sky in all these directions, like ships 
across the ocean, each laden with its pure and pearly 
treasures, and each having definite arrangements as to how 
much freight to discharge, and when to raise the hatches, 
and where to unlade. 

Nor is this all. The moisture of the atmosphere serves 
important purposes even when it is not discharged in rain. 
We need moist air for respiration ; physicians tell us 
much of the ill effects of our close furnace-heated rooms, 
where the opening joints in our furniture, and the loos- 
ened fastenings of our doors, seem like nature's own gasp- 
ings for better air and her struggles to let in the ever 
abundant supply ; and the growing paleness of the faces 
at our tables enforces the lesson, and indicates to us the 
need of a water-carrier that shall have free access to all our 
apartments. It is not too much to say that carefully as 
the air is constituted, with respect to oxygen and nitrogen, 
no one could long live in it, except for the watery particles 
which it also enfolds. 

And this contributes to the beauty of our world, as well 



The Atmosphere as a Water-carrier. 117 

as to our necessities. It is the aqueous vapor that gives 
the sky its blue. It is this, forming minute vesicles, or 
bubbles, which massed together, and electrified, gives us 
our white fleecy clouds, for which the blue sky furnishes 
so deep a background. We have from the same source 
the softening tints of the landscape, especially in the dis- 
tance — the purple of the mountains, and the dim haze of 
blue that hangs like a thin gauze veil over the meadows 
and the hills. And it is by the same means that we get 
all the gorgeous coloring of our American sunsets, never 
twice the same, often superb in gold and crimson and fire, 
and quite unsurpassed by the famed " Italian skies." 
" O Lord, how manifold are thy works ! In wisdom hast 
thou made them all ! " 



n8 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE NAME HE GAVE IT. 

A ND God called the firmament Heaven. He named, 
in this way, successively, the several things that he 
created. He called the light Day. He called the dark- 
ness Night. And the gathering together of the waters 
called he Seas. So, when he opened this expanse, and 
enveloped our world with an atmosphere, he called that 
Heaven. The term is derived from a Hebrew verb which 
signifies to be uplifted, and has reference to its height. 
Our English word heaven has much the same origin and 
meaning, being derived from the verb to heave, meaning 
to lift upward, and signifying an uplifted thing. A literal 
rendering of the term, therefore, would be The Altitude. 
There are three ranges of such altitude in the universe, 
each separately called heaven ; and the true rakiah, or 
expanse, may be conceived of as embracing them all. 
The first and lowest of these consists of our atmosphere. 
It seems, indeed, high enough, when we look up at the 
blue arch into which it figures itself; it certainly stands 
much higher than anything on earth ; but compared with 
the two other heavens, it is all close at hand. The atmos- 
phere is commonly reckoned about 45 miles in height; 
but observations have made it quite certain that it is at 



The Name He Gave It. 119 

least a hundred miles high, and perhaps two hundred. 
Indeed, it is quite uncertain whether its limit is determin- 
able, and whether it does not so gradually melt away into 
the luminiferous ether beyond that the line between the 
two cannot be drawn. This is the first heaven : the place 
in which the clouds sail and the birds fly.* 

Next comes the starry heaven — the great expanse 
created in the space-making era referred to in Chapter 
XVIII. This is a much loftier altitude. Behold the height 
of the stars, how high they are ! f It is the vain struggle 
of science even in our own day to measure, and to rep- 
resent in figures that will have any meaning for us, 
the height of the stars. We mean, of course, by height, 
distance from the earth ; and the distance of the fixed 
stars, in most cases, baffles computation, and in nearly all 
cases baffles all attempts at intelligible expression. We 
take our largest measurement, the mile, and we compute 
it in our largest common number, the million, and it runs 
us into lines of figures which we simply read without 
comprehending. Mr. Darwin, in his " Origin of Species," 
gives us an illustration, by which to compute the magni- 
tude of our expression, "a million." He says, stretch 
a strip of paper 83^ feet in length along the side of a 
great hall. Then go to one end of it and measure off 
one inch. Then take the inch a*nd divide it into tenths. 
One of these tenths will represent 100, and it will take 
by that scale the whole 83? feet to represent a million. 
Our millions exhaust themselves in measuring the plan- 
etary distances : how much more in measuring the dis- 

* Gen. i. 20. Ps. cxlviii. 4. f Job xxii. 12. 



120 The Story of Creation. 

tances of the fixed stars. Well indeed was it named — 
this expanse, including the starry spaces — the heaved-up 
thing, the heaven, the high. But as we shall reach this 
subject again in the work of the fourth day, this must at 
present suffice for the heaven of the stars. 

Beyond this lies the third heaven,* to which God takes 
his people when they go out of this world. There God's 
throne is set, and there the cherubim and seraphim salute 
him with their songs. The apostle Paul speaks of that 
world as one with which he had once had a remarkable 
experience : " I knew a man in Christ . . . (whether jn 
the body I cannot tell, or whether out of the body I can- 
not tell : God knoweth), such an one caught up to the 
third heaven." Such language implies locality ; and quite 
in agreement with this thought are some other portions 
of the sacred word. From that place came our blessed 
Lord, and to that place he returned, taking with him that 
same body in which he suffered on the cross for our sins. 
From that place also came the angel Gabriel, "being 
caused to fly swiftly" that he might reach the prophet 
with his message "at the time of the evening oblation." f 
And we shall not get very far astray on this subject, prob- 
ably, if we include this uppermost of the three heavens, 
also, in the rakiah which was opened so deep on that 
space-making day. A world, perhaps a system of worlds, 
has been created, amid which God shall manifest himself 
in a peculiar manner, and where he shall surround himself 
with beings whose natures are like his own. There the 
King holds his court. Thence he sends dispatches to 
the outlying provinces of creation. And it is unto that 

* 2 Cor. xii. 2. t Dan. ix. 21. 



The Name He Gave It. 121 

place, beautiful beyond comparison, and blessed beyond 
thought, that he will at last bring up those lowly beings 
on whom his own image has been stamped, and who have 
been redeemed by the blood of his only-begotten Son. 

It might well be that "star-eyed science" should stand 
in reverent silence, when asked the way to that world. 
She has no voice to answer that question ; but silent 
though she is, she has more than once been seen pointing 
with significant finger out into those depths where the 
Happy Place may yet be found to lie. Professor O. M. 
Mitchell, in his " Planetary and Stellar Worlds," sketches 
the calculations of Argelander and Struve, leading to the 
conclusion that there is a point round which the whole 
starry system turns. And the same distinguished author 
says that Maedler, the successor of Struve in the observa- 
tory of Dupal, has indicated the direction in which we 
must look for that critical point, if we should desire to 
find it. First, he determines that it must be somewhere 
in the direction of the constellation Taurus. Next he 
narrows down the range to that group in this constella- 
tion, known as the Pleiades, or the Seven Stars. And 
thus pressing on from star to star, and from point to 
point, subjecting each step in his calculations to the 
severest tests, this great astronomer reaches his conclu- 
sion : "Alcyone, the principal star in the group of the 
Pleiades, now occupies the centre of gravity [for the whole 
heavens] and is at present the sun about which the uni- 
verse of stars composing our astral system is revolving." 
In another observation, he discovers that this Alcyone 
" occupies the optical centre " of the immediate group to 

which it belongs, and says that " the telescope shows no 
16 



122 The Story of Creation. 

less than fourteen great suns in all, balanced one with 
another, in that great central system." No wonder that 
with such discoveries as this in mind, that eminent Chris- 
tian scholar, Dr. Dawson, of Montreal, should suggest that 
if our world should continue long enough to accumulate 
the necessary observations, " we might hope even to cal- 
culate the direction and distance of this physical heaven 
of heavens." * 

Speculations like this may not be very conclusive ; but, 
if even speculation shall bring us more to think of the 
blessed world, and shall give it something more of reality 
in our minds, it may serve a useful purpose. Suppose 
that Maedler's reckoning should prove true ; and suppose 
that his great centre, with its fourteen blazing suns com- 
bined in one system, shall represent a colony of worlds, 
which, like green islands in the deep sea, shall constitute 
the home of the blest. " In my Father's house are many 
mansions ; " and, with so many suns shining at once on 
his habitation, we may well say, "Who coverest thyself 
with light as with a garment ; " while we take up with a 
new and more definite meaning the oft-repeated words of 
the Revelator, "There shall be no night there." 

There is one picture of that world in the book of Reve- 
lation, which, in this connection, has deep interest for us. 
" I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire, and 
them that had gotten the victory stand on the sea of 
glass, having the harps of God." As it were — that is, 
this is the comparison. It was a sea that looked like 
glass — a crystal sea. It seemed mingled with fire, too, 
just as the smooth sea sometimes looks when you gaze 

* "Nature and the Bible," page 71. 



The Name He Gave It. 123 

across it toward the rising sun. The time is morning. 
The night has been one of darkness and of storms. But 
the day is breaking ; the sun is rising in clear sky ; and 
his level rays now gild the silent waters. Their tossings 
are over. And these happy souls that stand upon the 
sea are " on " it only as a city is said to be upon the sea, 
which is built along the shore. They have landed on the 
white beach, not shipwrecked, but rescued ; and there they 
view the wondrous calm. The danger is all over now, 
the wear and worry of life past, the dark struggle of death 
past, and they take up their harps and prepare for the new 
song. We wait a little and it begins ; and, as they sing, 
the music rises to a loud and lofty strain. Louder than 
the voice of the waves that just now brake upon that 
shore, louder than the howling of the winds that tossed 
and almost wrecked them, even as " the voice of a great 
thunder, and as the sound of many waters," it rolls across 
the deep, and we catch the distant strain even from our 
far-off shore. " Salvation unto our God, and unto the 
Lamb, forever and ever. Amen." About the locality of 
heaven we need not have much dispute. Of its altitude, 
whether we refer to its place in the material universe, to 
the magnificence of its fitting up, to the blessedness of 
its enjoyments, or to the purity of its pleasures, we need, 
however, have no doubt. It is the uplifted place, the 
heaved-up, the Heaven. 



124 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

OPENING OF THE THIRD DAY I A WORLD UNDER WATER. 

[*T is time we noticed the curious order in which the 
story of creation is constructed. We have already 
observed how the successive movements of that sublime 
work are grouped into six periods, or days ; but these days 
themselves are also grouped, and the cosmogonic week is 
subdivided into two great chapters. The first of these 
chapters embraces the first three days ; the second chap- 
ter embraces the next three ; and the whole is preceded 
by an introduction and followed by a conclusion, while 
the two chapters also curiously correspond the one to the 
other. The first day of the first chapter gives us light : 
the first day of the second chapter gives us the great 
sources of light, the sun, moon, and stars. The second 
day of the first chapter gives us the firmament, dividing 
the waters from the waters : the second day of the second 
chapter gives us the fowl that fly in the open firmament 
and the fish that tenant the waters. The third day of each 
of the two chapters presents a double work — that of the 
first giving us (i) the dry land, and (2) the highest form 
of unconscious life, while that of the second chapter gives 
us (1) the animals that inhabit the dry land, and (2) the 



A World Under Water. 



125 



highest form of conscious life, viz. the human. The fol- 
lowing tabular statement, which as to substance is to be 
credited to Professor Guyot, will perhaps make all this 
plainer : 

OUTLINE OF CREATION. 
INTRODUCTION. 

1. Origin of matter: in the beginning God created the heaven and the 
earth. 

2. Matter nebulous : and the earth was without form, and void. 

3. Motion and potencies : and the Spirit of God moved on the face of 
the waters. 

THE SIX DAYS. 



The First Three Days, 

1. Light. Gen. i. 3. 

2. Firmament, dividing the waters. 

Gen. i. 6. 

3. A double work: (1) Dry land; 

(2) Highest unconscious life. 
Gen. i. 9-12: 



The Second Three Days. 

4. The Lights. Gen. i. 14. 

5. Birds that fly in the firmament, and 

fish that swim in the waters. 
Gen. i. 20 - 23. 

6. A double work : ( 1 ) Land animals ; 

(2) Highest form of conscious 
life. Gen. i. 24 - 26. 



CONCLUSION. 

7. Creation ended. God rested the seventh day. Gen. ii. 1-3. 



The third day opens with the call, " Let the waters un- 
der the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and 
let the dry land appear." We are to infer that when this 
call was made the waters were in all places, and that the 
dry land had not yet appeared. This means that our world 
was under water. There was a universal deluge — not the 
flood of Noah's time, but a much earlier one, and one of 
probably much longer duration. Has science any response 
to make to this statement ? 



126 The Story of Creation. 

Nothing is more common than to find the petrified shells 
of marine molluscs very far from the sea. You break off 
a piece of rock in Western New York, and you find one 
of these shells in it. You pick up a fragment of similar 
rock in Kansas, and you find another. You know that 
these are not fresh-water shells, because in a fresh-water 
bivalve like this the beak or most prominent part of the 
shell is nearer one end than the other, whereas in this 
fossil shell it is in the middle. Moreover, in the fresh- 
water shell the two lids of the bivalve are alike, whereas 
in the one you found in the rock the two lids have a dif- 
ferent degree of convexity. And if you were to familiar- 
ize yourself with the forms of sea molluscs, you would 
find creatures still living in the ocean, sufficiently like 
what you discovered in the rock, to indicate that they be- 
long to the same general family. You have picked up a 
petrified sea-shell ; and, if you go on looking for such 
curiosities, you will perhaps find something that people 
call " petrified honey-comb," which is in fact a species of 
coral. And still other varieties of sea-life will greet you, 
until you are forced to the conclusion that the country 
over which you are walking was once entirely submerged. 
Things like this appear everywhere. There is not a con- 
tinent or an island on the globe that does not give evi- 
dence of having had its foundations laid under water. 

Well, if we have correctly traced the history of creation 
thus far, this was exactly the condition of our planet be- 
fore life dawned here. The crust of the earth was as yet 
but little wrinkled, because the process of condensation 
had as yet proceeded but a little way. Or, what means 
the same thing, the mountains had not yet been much 



A World Under Water. 127 

uplifted, nor had the ocean beds been greatly depressed. 
Moreover, the vaporous masses that had so long hung 
around our globe had been condensed, and there had been 
a long period of storm. The rains had flooded the earth 
everywhere. There was no dry land. One unbroken sea 
prevailed from pole to pole ; or if it was broken here and 
there by an incipient granite mountain summit, the excep- 
tion was scarcely to be taken into account in any general 
statement of the case. Geologists, with scarcely any dis- 
sent, assign such an era to our globe. They tell us of a 
time very remote when it was a world under water. In 
short, they tell the story very much as Moses told it before 
geology was born. 

It was once the fashion to refer all these wide-spread 
water-marks on our planet to Noah's flood. And it was 
supposed most wonderfully to confirm the account of that 
deluge that we were able so distinctly to show that the 
sea had once overflowed all the land. But curiously 
enough, no one seemed to notice that Moses had given an 
account of a universal deluge with a much earlier date ; 
and so when it began to be shown that Noah's flood, 
which, as described in Genesis, lasted only about six 
months, never could have produced all the water-marks 
we see, it was almost felt that one of our props was being 
knocked away. But as we have studied our Bible more 
thoroughly, we have found it saying that there was a 
flood before man appeared on'the earth ; before the birds 
or the fish were created ; before the earth brought forth 
grass ; before the mountain-chains rose to their present 
height ; before the continents were lifted to their present 
level. So says the Bible. Before geology was wrought 



128 The Story of Creation. 

out we could not have confirmed this statement from na- 
ture. Before the nebular hypothesis was suggested we 
could not have given a natural history of the fact. But 
now, as in so many other cases, so here again, science 
responds to the voice of the divine Word. 



Let The Dry Land Appear. 129 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

LET THE DRY LAND APPEAR. 

TT had not yet appeared. The continents were begin- 
ning to form, but as yet they were under water. The 
wrinkling of the earth's crust was progressing, however, 
and soon the ridges began to lift themselves out of the 
sea. It was a slow process. It was not accomplished in 
a period of twenty-four hours. Indeed, it is not fully 
ended yet ; for there are places on the earth where the 
sea is still retiring, and the dry land appearing where 
once the ocean rolled. 

It is not stated by what means this uplifting occurred. 
We only read that God ordered it, or willed it, which 
means the same thing. Whether this order was executed 
by some subordinate agency, or whether he executed it 
directly by his own power, we do not learn from the Book. 
We read that he said, " Let the dry land appear : and it 
was so." This is all. If we can find any natural agency 
at work, sufficient to produce these results, we are at per- 
fect liberty to suppose that such agency executed the 
order, and fulfilled the demand. If we can find no such 
agency, we are just as much at liberty to refer everything 
to miraculous power. 

This work, expressed in simple secular speech, was a 
17 



130 The Story of Creation. 

change in the level of the earth's surface ; and such 
changes are going on continually, though at present on a 
much smaller scale than during the early stages of our 
world's history. At St. Augustine, in Florida, the stumps 
of cedar trees can be found standing where they grew, 
that are covered with the sea-water even at low tide. The 
same is true of the coast of Rhode Island. Says Professor 
Winchell, in his " Sketches of Creation," " In the harbor of 
Nantucket, the upright stumps of trees are found eight 
feet below the lowest tide, with their roots still buried in 
their native soil. Similar ruins of ancient submarine 
forests occur on Martha's Vineyard, and on the north side 
of Cape Cod, and again at Portland. In the region of the 
St. Croix River, separating Maine from New Brunswick, 
the coast has been raised, carrying deposits of recent 
shells and sea-weeds in one instance to the height of 
twenty-eight feet above the present surface of the sea. 
The island of Grand Menan, off the mouth of the St. 
Croix River, is slowly rotating on an axis, so that while the 
south side is gradually dipping beneath the waves, the 
north is lifted into high bluffs. Near the river St. John's 
is an area of twenty square miles, containing marine shells 
and plants, recently elevated from the sea." 

A famous water-mark of this sort is the temple of Jupi- 
ter Serapis at Puzzuoli, in Italy. That temple was of 
course built on dry land ; but its marble floor is now three 
feet below the surface of the water. Indeed, there is a 
still lower floor. You find it at a depth six feet greater ; 
and it is laid in mosaics, indicating great expense and care 
on the part of the builders. Rising from these floors are 
three marble pillars, each about forty feet high; and if 



Let the Dry Land Appear. 



131 



you examine those pillars to the height of about twelve 
feet, you find them uninjured. But above this, for about 
nine feet, the marble is perforated with little holes, as if 
it were worm-eaten. Professor Winchell says, " Exploring 




TEMPLE OF JUPITER SERAPIS. 



these holes, we find them to enlarge inward ; and at the 
bottom of each repose the remains of a little boring 
bivalve shell — Lithodomus. This little bivalve is the 



132 The Story of Creation. 

same species now inhabiting the adjacent waters. We 
know well its habits. It does not live in open waters. It 
burrows in the sand, or bores its way into the shells of 
other molluscs, or into solid stone. But it never climbs 
trees, nor builds its nest like a bird in the air. How, 
then, does it occur twenty-three feet above the surface of 
the water? There evidently has been a time when the 
whole column, to the height of these Lithodotni, was sub- 
merged. The oscillations of the surface, therefore, as 
shown by these indications, were first a subsidence and 
submergence of the original foundation, requiring the 
construction of a second arc six feet above the other; the 
continuation of the subsidence until the original pavement 
was twenty-seven feet beneath the surface, at which depth 
it remained a sufficient time for the little stone-borers to 
penetrate to the heart of the pillar — a work which they 
required a life-time to accomplish. Next occurred an ele- 
vation, raising the Lithodomi out of the water, and thus 
ending their existence. Nor is this all. Observations 
made since the beginning of the present century show 
that the foundations of this temple are again sinking at 
the rate of an inch per year." 

Oscillations of this character are discoverable in nearly 
every quarter of the globe, showing that the earth's crust 
is still far from being so stable as we generally suppose. 
In the earlier stages of our planet there must have been 
times when such upheavals and depressions were far more 
rapid, when they were attended with far greater violence, 
and when they occurred on a much broader scale. It was 
before man appeared, for as yet the earth-crust was too 
unstable to afford him a safe footing. It was before even 



Let the Dry Land Appear. 133 

the lower animals appeared, before the dawn of vegetable 
life. Things were preparing. More and more did the 
dry land gain upon the water. More and more did the 
ocean bed sink away, and the seas retire. There was of 
course more or less of this sort of movement from the 
first forming of the earth's crust ; but now it was wrought 
upon a scale so broad as to form a characteristic feature 
of the times. There was particularly at this epoch a gain 
in the land-surface — that part of the earth which was to 
be the chief theatre of human activity. The continents 
were growing. Mere rock-germs at first, they extended 
northward and southward, and began to foreshadow the 
shape in which they were at last to be permanently settled. 
The chief mountain ranges now also began to raise their 
heads, and those differences in continental elevation to 
appear which give drainage to the lands and create the 
courses of the rivers in their flow toward the sea. It was 
not a work to be done in one day of solar time. The 
three thousand miles breadth of North America was not 
drained so swiftly as that. Much less the greater breadth 
of the Asiatic area. Doubless God was able to do this 
work in that brief time, but the Bible asserts no such 
stupendous miracle, and it is not worth while for us to 
invent one. 



134 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE CONTOUR OF THE CONTINENTS. 

rHE sea is his and he made it, and his hands formed 
the dry land. So says the Sacred Word ; and it 
will not be amiss to notice in a brief way some evidence 
that the land-masses of our globe are the work of design. 
We have quite freely conceded that the shaping of the 
continents was performed by certain natural agencies. 
We have not once asked that anything of this kind should 
be referred to miraculous interference. But none the less 
does this work carry the marks of a plan and a skill that 
can only be pronounced divine. 

Let us take a parallel case. The human eye is a piece 
of workmanship which can scarcely be examined for a 
moment without suggesting an artificer. It shows con- 
trivance, adaptation, a knowledge of the science of optics, 
and marvellous mechanical ingenuity. A telescope does 
not at all compare with it ; nor has anything yet been con- 
structed by human hand that more clearly indicates a 
contriver and a workman. But then, are we obliged on 
this account to say that every human eye was created by 
miracle, and set in its place just as we find it? We can 
not say that if we would. The eye, like every other organ 



The Contour of the Continents. 135 

of the human system, begins an obscure germ, and reaches 
its full measure under the operation of natural law. 

So it is with respect to those great continental masses 
which rise upon the surface of our globe. The dry land 
has an orderly distribution, and a skillful shaping, none 
the less that it rose from the sea by natural law. Perhaps 
God was watching and superintending continually while 
such law, as his agent, was doing this important work : 
some suppose that such was the case. Perhaps he made 
such adjustments " in the beginning," and created such 
forces then as would work out these exact results : some 
suppose that such was his method. He has not informed 
us which view may be the one to accept. But this he 
says, and this appears in the finished result, the work was 
planned and executed by his own hand. 

When the dry land rose it formed itself into three prin- 
cipal masses ; and all three are shaped, as three trees 
might be shaped, or as three living creatures might be 
formed, on one general plan. Each of these masses, as 
to its principal area, rests upon the northern hemisphere. 
Each has a southern appendage ; and the general bend 
and trend of both the northern and the southern masses 
in each case of the three is quite similar. We begin with 
Europe, which has Africa on the south. True, the latter 
is not hung to it by any actual isthmic line ; but how near 
the shores approach at the straits of Gibraltar, and how 
naturally the one groups with the other under the eye ! 
Asia in the same way takes Australia, with which it is al- 
most literally united by a chain of islands. And America, 
North and South, seems almost to have been the com- 
pleted and primitive model after which the other two con- 



136 The Story of Creation. 

tinents were rudely and less perfectly formed. Europe 
with Africa as a southern appendage ; Asia with Australia 
hung upon it in the same way ; and North America with 
South America attached, as a kind of model to which the 
other two continental masses rudely conform — such is 
the chief grouping of the lands on our globe. 

There are several other peculiarities of continental con- 
tour which are noticeable. One is, says Professor Guyot 
in his " Earth and Man," " That the southern points of all 
the continents are high and rocky, and seem to be the ex- 
tremities of mountain belts, which came from far in the 
interior, and break off abruptly, without transition at the 
shore of the ocean." Thus South America runs out into 
the rocky precipices of Cape Horn, which ends the long 
line of the Andes. Thus Africa pushes out a similar 
point at the Cape of Good Hope, where Table Mountain 
rises sheer up from the waves 4,000 feet high. And thus 
Australia is shaped at Cape South East, of Van Dieman's 
Land, as if to show that each was built after one general 
plan. 

Another of these curious analogies is found in a large 
island or group of islands lying just east of the southern 
point of each of these continental masses. South Amer- 
ica is thus attended upon by the Falkland Group. Africa 
shows us in the same position the Island of Madagascar. 
And Australia is finished out with the double island of 
New Zealand. Even Hindostan, though scarcely to be 
reckoned with this group of southern continental termini, 
so nearly approaches it as to keep up the analogy, and 
presents us, just east of Cape Comorin, the beautiful island 
of Ceylon. 



The Contour of the Continents. 137 

One other analogy between these southern appendages, 
as we have called them, is found in the fact that each has 
its back bent on the western shore, in toward the centre. 
The interior point of this concave in South America is 
reached at Arica, at the foot of the High Cordillera of the 
state of Bolivia. In Africa the same thing is marked in 
the Gulf of Guinea. And in Australia, though the bend 
has slid down more upon the south than the west, as seen 
in the Gulf of Nuyts, it still opens westward rather than 
eastward, and so, though imperfectly, carries out the plan. 

Steffens, as quoted by Guyot, pushes these analogies 
still further ; and having grouped the great terrestrial 
masses into " three double worlds," as we have done, he 
shows how the tendency appears, not only in the three 
principal southern areas to which our attention has been 
turned, to first expand, and then contract toward the north, 
while each has a narrow point piercing southward, but 
how all the important peninsulas of the globe approach 
the same configuration ; Greenland, California, and Florida 
in America are illustrations ; so are Scandinavia, Spain, 
Italy, and Greece, in Europe ; and the two Indies, Corea, and 
Kamschatka, in Asia, all conform to the same law. Much 
more might be said on this subject ; but sufficient has 
perhaps been shown to make it evident that the contour 
of the continents, so far as marginal outline is concerned, 
has been arranged on one general plan. 

But we must not omit to notice the analogy of the ele- 
vation of these continents, as well as of their extent ; for 
it is their elevation which is particularly noticed as the 
work of the third day ; and for the purpose they serve in 
the economy of life their vertical measurement is as im- 
18 



138 The Story of Creation. 

portant as their horizontal extent. As a rule, then, each 
continent rises gradually from the shore toward the in- 
terior. As a rule, also, the greatest elevation of a conti- 
nent is not at the centre, but far toward one side. And 
finally, as a rule, the long and gentle slope of each conti- 
nent is toward the Atlantic Ocean or toward the Arctic 
Ocean, which is a continuation of the Atlantic, while the 
shorter and more abrupt descents dip toward the Pacific, 
or toward the Indian Ocean, which is a continuation of 
the Pacific. 

This circumstance determines several things of vast 
importance. It determines the course and the length of 
the rivers. It determines the place of greatest rain-fall. 
It modifies the direction of the winds. It has an important 
influence on the temperature. And in all these ways it 
strongly affects the distribution of both animal and vege- 
table life, and thus also greatly modifies the history of 
man. In the hot climates our race naturally grows indo- 
lent ; for nature being bountiful there, and summer inces- 
sant, there is little to compel exertion. In the excessively 
cold climates vegetation becomes scanty and nature nig- 
gardly, and there is no encouragement for wide plans or 
skillful work. So that our race is not much better in the 
arctic regions than in the torrid zone. But in the tem- 
perate latitudes we are stimulated to exertion, and re- 
warded for it, and so the race reaches its best condition 
there. 

The great rivers, also, created by these continental 
slopes, have had much to do with shaping human history. 
Emigration, in the early stages of our race, naturally fol- 
lowed the principal water-courses ; and both in the old 



The Contour of the Continents. 139 

times and in the new the chief cities of the world have 
stood upon the banks of these streams. The Nile bears 
Thebes ; the Euphrates, Babylon ; and even the little Tiber 
could fix the site of Rome, while the London and New 
York of more modern times are planted at the point where 
the Thames and the Hudson debouch into the sea. The 
indentation of coast lines is also important; and no part of 
the world, at least in modern times, has attained to emi- 
nence whose shores have not opened deep for the ingress 
of the sea, or run out long arms to grasp the great treas- 
ures which commerce bears upon its bosom. Africa, lag- 
ging behind the whole world, the field of daring explorers 
and self-sacrificing missionaries even at this later day, is 
concentrated upon itself. It sends out into the sea no 
important peninsula, nor does it open its coasts freely to 
let in the surrounding waters. Covering the enormous 
surface of 8,720,000 square miles, it yet has but 14,000 
miles of sea coast, the proportion being the smallest of 
any continent of the globe. Asia with oceans on three sides 
shows greater indentations, but, with 14,128,000 square 
miles of surface, has but 30,800 miles of coast line, being 
in that respect only one grade above Africa, even as it is 
but one grade above it in civilization. Europe, however, 
with but 2,680,000 square miles, has 17,200 miles of shore, 
and exhibits the highest form of civilization, and has given 
a welcome to the purest form of religion that has ever ex- 
isted on our planet. Our own North America stands next 
to Europe in this important comparison, having one mile 
of coast for every 228 of area, while Asia has but one for 
every 459, and Africa but one for every 623. 

Facts like these indicate the importance of the subject 



140 The Story of Creation. 

we now have in hand. The contour of the continents 
was to determine at least for thousands of years the seat 
of civilization on our globe. Days may come, through 
the agency of other means of intercommunication, when 
our sea commerce shall be relatively less important. Then 
the countries with a less open outlook may advance with- 
out inviting coasts and welcome harbors. But if we are 
to recognize God in history thus far, certainly we must 
recognize his hand in the uplifting of the continents, and 
in their indentations and outreachings along the shores. 



The Origin of Life. 141 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 



/^VNE of those doctrines which certain persons who 
^^^ have devoted themselves to the study of the physical 
sciences have broached is what is called archegenesis, or 
the doctrine of spontaneous generation. According to 
this doctrine there is a potency in our earth-matter, prop- 
erly treated, to produce a very low order of life, without 
previous seed or germ. And numerous experiments have 
been made, in which it has been attempted to demonstrate 
the fact that mere earth-matter, from which all possible 
life-germs have been destroyed, may develop living things. 
Most scientific men regard this doctrine as quite doubtful. 
Indeed, the advocates of what is known as the develop- 
ment hypothesis, who would be expected to accept this 
view, if any one did, quite generally repudiate it ; and the 
most that can be said for it is that " skilled experimenters " 
are diligently applying themselves to the solution of the 
question, and that "opinion seems to be held in a balance 
between conflicting evidences." 

Religious people have quite generally regarded them- 
selves as bound in duty to reject this doctrine. It seems 
to many such people as intended to rule out the idea of a 
Creator. And they are often bold to denounce it as some- 



142 The Story of Creation. 

thing opposed to the clear teaching of the Bible. What, 
then, does the Bible say, that has any bearing on this 
subject? What account does it give of the origin of life 
on our planet ? It is to this point we have come in this 
Story of Creation ; and it will be well for us to divest 
ourselves of all prepossessions, and examine the record 
with religious care. The dawn of life here is recorded in 
the following terms : " Let the earth bring forth grass . . . 
and the earth brought forth grass." Both the command 
and the fulfillment are traced on through the higher stages 
of vegetable life, but this is the beginning : " The earth 
brought forth grass." 

Several things in this statement are very noticeable, 
though this is the dawn of life, it is not represented by 
the word bara, to create, nor yet by the word asa, to make ; 
but simply by the word tadhske, to give birth, or bring 
forth. God calls for the grass indeed, he being the foun- 
tain-head of all power; but the call is for the interposition 
of a subordinate agent, the earth, in the production of it. 
That agent is put under working orders, as it were, and 
is assigned a task. It is to germinate grass ; and it imme- 
diately proceeds to do the thing commanded. 

This is not to deny at all but that God was able to 
create vegetation by an immediate act ; and to have set 
not only the grass, but the " trees bearing fruit," in the 
soil full grown. He was able to create the world in one 
day, instead of six days, and just as able to create it in 
one instant as in one day ; but we are reading his Word 
not to find out what he could have done if he had chosen, 
but what he actually did. And in the production of vege- 
table life, there is not the slightest hint that he created 



The Origin of Life. 143 

anything full grown. Let us stand close by the record. 
It is quite as reverent toward God to accept his Word 
exactly as he caused it to be written, as it is to invent a 
theory, and volunteer a belief in something which he does 
not say. 

We have passed some epochs in this history, and shall 
encounter others, where a direct divine interposition is 
expressed. We found such a place when we considered 
" the origin of matter ; " for there, of course, it is impos- 
sible to attribute anything to second causes. We found 
another such place, apparently, when " the Spirit of God 
brooded on the face of the waters ; " for matter of itself 
has nothing of motion, or, so far as we know, of gravita- 
tion, or of any of those qualities which are essential to 
the building up of the system of nature; and this " brood- 
ing" of the Spirit seems to be at the place where such 
qualities were imparted. But here, God expressly calls 
in a secondary agency. It is not an absolute creation 
that is here recorded, but a birth or a bringing forth. 
God's call impregnates the soil with vital forces, and 
forthwith vegetation begins to appear. 

Now this is not spontaneous generation ; but it is a 
door open for the acceptance of that doctrine, if it shall 
ever be established. For, if such vital forces were im- 
parted to the earth at that early epoch, who can say but 
that at least a remnant of such forces is discoverable 
now ? It need not at all alarm us, should such be found 
the case. When it shall be fairly proven, if it ever shall, 
that the doctrine of archegenesis is true, and that simple 
earth-matter, without a germ, can develop life, let us answer 
at once, " Very likely. We read in the Mosaic cosmogony 



144 The Story of Creation. 

that the earth was given a birth-power, and possibly some- 
thing of it still remains. You think you have discovered 
evidence of that power : we can point you to the source 
whence it sprang. Like everything else in nature, it is 
of God." . 

Some will object to so generous a concession. The 
Bible does not admit of it, they say. The story of the 
origin of life is not all told in this first chapter of Genesis. 
It is given in the chapter following in greater detail. And 
the plain meaning is that the plants and trees that first 
stocked the earth were created full grown. " God made 
the earth and the heavens ; and every plant of the field 
before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field be- 
fore it grew. For the Lord God had not caused it to rain 
upon the earth ; and there was not a man to till the 
ground ; but there went up a mist from the earth, and 
watered the whole face of the ground." * 

Few men have written upon the subject of creation 
who would be less likely to be suspected of any leaning 
toward the modern doctrine of evolution, and especially 
the doctrine of archegenesis, than would Rev. Dr. Murphy, 
of Belfast. He -is so conservative as even to adhere yet 
to the notion of the six solar days. Yet in translating 
this famous passage he turns it completely end for end, 
and makes it read in exact accordance with the views 
above stated. In our version of the Scriptures it suffers 
a palpable perversion ; and he sets it right. Moses is 
describing the earth, in this passage, as it was when first 
created. It was a lifeless world. It was a world without 
rain, or mist, or plant, or man. So Dr. Murphy reads, 

* Gen. ii. 4-6. 



Origin of Life. 145 



"And not a plant of the field was yet in the land, and 
not an herb of the field yet grew. For the Lord God had 
not caused it to rain upon this land, and there was no 
man to till the ground." For the remainder of the passage 
we give the translation of Professor Bush : " Nor went 
there up a mist to water the whole face of the ground." 

There is nothing here that tells us of plants and trees 
created full grown and then set out in the fields to grow. 
The passage, rightly understood, simply tells us what the 
condition of the earth was at a very early stage. It was 
a lifeless earth. It was a dry earth. And of course there 
was not a human being upon it. We easily find the 
answering form to this picture. Our planet was at one 
time, as to its surface, a cinder. It had just come out of 
the fire. At a later period the rains fell upon it, and the 
rocks were disintegrated, and a soil was formed in which 
sprang up all manner of vegetation ; but it was not so at 
first. " Not a plant of the field was yet in it, and not an 
herb of the field yet grew. For the Lord God had not 
yet caused it to rain upon the earth, neither was there a 
man to till the ground ; nor went there up so much as a 
mist to water the earth anywhere." 

The record in the second chapter thus perfectly agrees 
with what we found in the main narrative ; and we may 
still cling to the doctrine that at God's call the earth was 
made causative, and evolved, generated, gave birth unto, 
or brought forth grass. Let the doctrine of archegenesis, 
then, be established, if any one shall succeed in demon- 
strating it. It need not shake our confidence in the Bible 
at all. Moses has left an open door here, wide enough to 
admit that hypothesis and a good deal more. , 

19 



J 46 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 



MOSES AND MR. DARWIN. 



I"T is very unfortunate, when good men create unneces- 
sary hostility between the Bible and Science. It was 
a pity that when Galileo saw that the earth was in mo- 
tion, the ecclesiastical power of that day quoted Scripture 
against him, and compelled him to recant. It would have 
been a good deal better to have examined the Bible once 
more to see if, after all, it could not be fairly interpreted 
in a way to admit of the theory which Galileo had pro- 
pounded. It was a pity, also, that such a man as Leibnitz 
should ever have allowed himself to attack the theory of 
gravitation, and to say that it was " subversive of natural, 
and inferentially of revealed religion." * And it is a pity 
that so eminent a man as Sir David Brewster should have 
pronounced in the same way against the nebular hy- 
pothesis, as he has done in his " Other Worlds." But 
this fashion of opposing the conclusions of science, on 
supposed Scriptural grounds, will probably prevail for a 
time yet, unless the humiliations to which it has brought 
the friends of religion begin to be more seriously con- 
sidered. 

It is not to be thought very strange, therefore, that so 

t * Quoted in " Origin of Species," page 422. 



Moses and Mr. Darwin. 147 

bold a thinker as Mr. Charles Darwin should have been 
somewhat opposed by good men. He has elaborated a 
theory, long in vogue in one shape or another, in which 
it is supposed that a great many things which we have 
been accustomed to regard as absolute creations are the 
product of natural law. A "few germs" may have been 
created, to start the system, as he believes ; but after that, 
plants, animals, men, were slowly developed by natural 
selection, and by the necessary " survival of the fittest in 
the struggle for life." And he has accordingly been set 
upon as at least a probable atheist, and at best a babbler 
in science whom it is easy for the merest smatterer in 
that field to demolish. Perhaps he is wrong. Perhaps 
his brilliant theory, sustained by such a wealth of learning 
as he brings to it, and discussed with such singular candor 
and good temper on his side, may pass away. But, if it 
be demolished, it will be by arguments drawn from the 
field of science, and not by any supposed dictum of the 
divine Word. Moses, in his account of creation, by no 
means commits himself to the full, rounded development 
theory; but just as clearly he does not pronounce against 
it. He leaves the door open for any reasonable specula- 
tions any one may choose to indulge on that subject. 

We have seen where such a door stands open for the 
doctrine of spontaneous generation. We find it in the 
account he gives of the origin of vegetable life; and a 
similar statement might be made of certain matters re- 
corded further on, as, for example, where God says, " Let 
the waters bring forth abundantly ;" and again, where he 
says, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures." These 
passages will come under review in a subsequent chapter, 



148 The Story of Creation. 

and need not therefore be noticed any further here. 
Suffice it to say, that if there be room in this story for a 
belief in the development of mere eafth-matter into life- 
forms, much more is there room for a belief in the devel- 
opment of one life-form into another. For between no 
two life-forms, however wide apart, is there so deep a 
gulf, and one that seems so impassable, as between a life- 
form and mere earth-matter. 

Doubtless there are places in this first chapter of 
Genesis where we are held by the record inflexibly to the 
belief of an absolute creation. But it is not so as respects 
everything which Moses here records. Mr. Darwin, in 
his eager speculations, may also very naturally have over- 
looked the limits of his theory, and may have here and there 
ignored the divine interposition, where it really occurred. 
And it may also be true that while some very ignorant 
men upon the religious side in this controversy have, 
with more zeal than discretion, attacked the "scientists," 
men who hate religion have on the other side been push- 
ing Darwinism in the direction of atheism. A system of 
science, however, is not responsible for the follies of all 
who assume to be its champions, and such a system may 
be sound as to its main features, though embodying some 
mistakes. The Copernican theory of astronomy was right ; 
but there were some errors in it as first announced, which 
had to be corrected. And what some regard as Mr. Dar- 
win's folly may be right as setting forth a general law of 
nature, while in some of its important details he may not 
have taken sufficiently into account the exceptions to the 
rule. 

As to the matter in hand, if Mr. Darwin wishes to say 



Moses and Mr. Darwin. 149 

that our present vegetation all sprang from two or three 
germs, we need not take issue with him. Perhaps Moses 
had that very thing in mind when he specified those two 
or three things, " grass and herb yielding seed after his 
kind, and fruit-tree yielding fruit after his kind." Or 
even if Professor Tyndal, who would seem to go further 
than Mr. Darwin, and to deny the creation of the " two 
or three germs " — if he wishes to assign " a potency and 
a promise" to the earth-matter itself, we need not fly into 
a passion. Rather let us tell these men, " Make out your 
case and then come back to us and we will see how it 
may agree with the record. Perhaps we will show you 
plenty of room for your speculations in perfect harmony 
with the Word of God." God summoned such potencies 
to just such a work, as recorded in this account of the 
third cosmogonic day ; and in response to that summons 
the great leap was made across the chasm between matter 
and life. The earth brought forth grass ; and if that were 
done, is it too much to believe that the grass may have 
brought forth something else ? The development hypoth- 
esis may be all wrong ; but it is quite unnecessary for us 
to say that if it be not wrong the Bible is not true. 

Whether the development theory shall work good or 
evil depends entirely on the manner in which it is handled. 
One use of the word evolution, says President Anderson, 
in his admirable address at the Evangelical Alliance, " is 
to name the process of growth in the universe, discount- 
ing from the word all reference to volition or pre-existing 
consciously-formed plan or idea." Of course, if the word 
be used in this sense, the doctrine covered by it may be 
atheistic. But, says the same eminent authority, the word 



150 The Story of Creation. 

may be " a name for the process of the Almighty in devel- 
oping the plan of creation — it being used simply as a 
name for the process of the creative energy under the 
control of Infinite Intelligence." In this sense, the word 
has no more an atheistic meaning than has the word 
creative. And, as President Anderson well remarks, 
"There is an unworthy timidity among many Christian 
men at these hypotheses, with which the scientific imagi- 
nation is constantly teeming." 

Mr. Darwin himself, in his " Origin of Species," says, 
" I see no good reason why the views given in this volume 
should shock the religious feelings of any one." And 
then to show in how friendly a way some religious men 
have been willing to meet him, he quotes from a letter he 
has just received from a " celebrated author and divine," 
saying that he has "gradually learnt to see that it is just 
as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that he 
created a few original forms, capable of self-development 
into other and needful forms, as to believe that he required 
a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the 
action of his laws." * 

Very similar is the language of Professor Tyndal. He 
seems indeed, at times, anxious enough to get rid of the 
idea of a God ; but if that really be his wish, the struggle 
even with him proves vain. In his Manchester Address 
he says, " I have stood in the spring time and looked upon 
the sprouting foliage, the grass and the flowers, and the 
general joy of opening life ; and in my ignorance of it all, 
I have asked myself whether there is no other power, 
being, or thing in the universe, whose knowledge of that 

* Appleton's edition, page 422. 



Moses and Mr. Darwin. 151 

of which I am so ignorant is greater than mine." And 
he adds, " My friends, the profession of that atheism, with 
which I am sometimes so lightly charged, would be an 
impossible answer to that question." 

A few additional excerpts from the utterances of emi- 
nent Christian scholars will perhaps sufficiently sustain the 
views here taken. Says President E. N. Potter, of Union 
College, in a letter to the New York " Tribune," dated 
December 4, 1875, "Writers of distinction in both Roman 
and Protestant churches have indicated that the hypothesis 
of evolution may be held, without any denial of the truth 
of Revelation. Besides the traces of some such notion, 
existing in Talmudic classics and patristic lore, competent 
scholars hold that the idea of evolution, not only in the 
successive periods of the Genesis, but in the progress 
from lower to higher forms, culminating in man, is readily 
reconcilable, if not in strictest accordance, with the origi- 
nal Scripture." 

President McCosh, before the Evangelical Alliance in 
1873, says, " In looking at these phenomena, men discover 
everywhere development or evolution. ... I am not sure 
that religion has any interest in holding absolutely by the 
one side or the other of this question. I am not sure that 
religion is entitled to insist that every species of insect 
has been created by special fiat of God, with no secondary 
agent employed." 

At the same meeting, Rev. J. C. Brown, LL.D., of 
Berwick-on-Tweed, in England, said, "All I know in re- 
gard to the vegetable kingdom is in accordance with this 
hypothesis ; and facts which I have learned in regard to 
the animal kingdom are in accordance with the supposi- 



152 The Story of Creation. 

tion that the work of creation in this kingdom has been 
analogous to what it has been in the other." At the same 
time Dr. Brown declared his acceptance of the general 
system of religion taught in the Shorter Catechism of the 
Westminster divines. 

These citations are made, not in the interest of the 
development hypothesis, but in the interest of religion. 
That hypothesis may be true or false ; that question must 
be decided upon purely scientific grounds ; and it is most 
unwise for us to attempt to array against such a hypothesis 
the Word of God. That Word, rightly understood, is not 
against it ; and speaking in general terms, were the 
hypothesis to be demonstrated to-morrow, the Bible would 
stand as unshaken as before. If Moses wishes to insist 
that there is a God, Mr. Tyndal himself will answer, " It 
is impossible to deny it." If Moses says that this system 
of nature had a beginning, the whole voice of scientific 
utterance in these days will be that " things look very 
much like it." And if Moses says that vegetation was 
induced by a germinating potency called for of God, what 
can those men respond but "amen," who have been so 
urgent in saying that they see in matter the "potency and 
promise of every kind of terrestrial life ! " So, even as 
respects the latest born of our scientific hypotheses, the 
one so lately born that it is accepted even by its best 
friends as a hypothesis only, we find that there is plenty 
of room for it, and something more than a hint of it in 
the Mosaic narrative. Let scientific men go on. Let 
them raise their hypothesis to the dignity of an ascer- 
tained fact. Let their guess be shown to be a law. We 
shall only say in reply, that Moses walked upon that 



Moses and Mr. Darwin. 153 

road long before they ever discovered it, and that he has 
affirmed, in respect to the germination of plants from 
mere earth-matter, more than any scientific man can 
claim to have yet shown. 



20 



154 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

GRASS, HERB, AND FRUIT-TREE. 

A S it is not best, unnecessarily, to array the Bible 
against Science, so it is not wise to affirm that we 
have discovered in it any scientific statement unless we 
are quite sure of our ground. Such a statement has been 
supposed by some to be embodied in the above three-fold 
classification of vegetable life. The seedless plants, called 
" grass " in the old Mosaic record, and the seed-bearing 
plants, called "herb," and the fruit-bearing plants, have 
been spoken of as giving in outline a system of botany, 
identical with that of Linnaeus, Jussieu, and DeCandolle. 
These, it was said, are the acotyledons, the monocotyle- 
dons, and the dicotyledons of their system. But, unfor- 
tunately for this pheasant view of things, that system is 
now regarded as worthless ; and Moses* classification 
turns out to be merely a popular one adapted to Egypt 
and the East. The " grass " here, as elsewhere in Scrip- 
ture, embraces those plants of lowliest form which float 
in the sea or spread themselves close along the soil. The 
"herb yielding seed" stands intermediate between the 
grass and the trees. And the " tree yielding fruit whose 
seed is in itself " stands simply conspicuous as the high- 
est form of vegetable life. 



Grass, Herb, and Fruit-tree. 155 

It was once an opinion that all these forms of vegetation 
sprang up together, and flourished side by side. But this 
is not stated. They all appeared indeed on the third day ; 
but they may have appeared successively. The lowest 
form of this vegetable life is mentioned first ; and, for 
aught Moses says, may have appeared first ; and there 
may have been a slow gradation of ascent from lowest to 
highest, so that as the highest form is mentioned last, it 
may have appeared last. The Book leaves that question 
entirely open. God made the earth to germinate all these 
sorts of vegetation on the third day ; but in what order 
they came he does not say. Let our scientific men dis- 
cover that if they can. 

Well, they think they have discovered it ; and their con- 
clusions are marked upon every good geological chart. 
They tell us that these different kinds of vegetation ap- 
peared in an orderly succession, — the lowlier plants came 
first, and those of more elaborate structure afterward. 
They find the remains of these plants imbedded in the 
rocks : in the earliest rocks that retain any vegetable life- 
forms, the Algae or sea-weeds ; in those of a little later 
period, the Acrogens, including the ferns and the ground 
pine ; while still later appear Gymnosperms, including 
trees ; and latest of all, Angiosperms, or trees with fruit. 
This is the order as we find it marked in the rocks. It 
begins with the lower and simpler forms and rises by slow 
gradations to the highest. Everything does not spring 
into being at once and full-grown. It takes time. God 
is never in a hurry. All the ages are his own ; and he 
delights to unfold his plans with deliberation. This suc- 
cession of orders, in the field of vegetable life, reaches 
from the archaeic epoch up to the very advent of man. 



156 The Story of Creation. 

In one particular Moses in this narrative quite out- 
travels present discovers*. It is a curious fact that while 
all geologists are agreed that in the natural order of things 
vegetable life ought to appear before animal life, yet they 
do not as yet discover it till animal life has first appeared. 
In the archasic rocks, says Professor Dana, we find " no 
distinct remains of plants." But he adds, ■■Animals of 
the lowest division of animal life were probably abundant." 
He gives an account from Dr. Dawson of one of these 
early tenants of the earth, called Eozoon, which he regards 
as a coral-making creature. He sees indeed in those 
early rocks certain substances, such as graphite and 
plumbago, which he believes to be of vegetable origin ; 
but he says, " No distinct remains of plants have been 
observed." Those remains ought to appear. In due time 
some close observer will perhaps find them. But for a 
voice from science on this subject we have to wait. Moses 
says that plants appeared on the third day, and animals 
not till the fifth. And perhaps at some future day our 
men of science may be able to say from actual observation 
what already they generally believe, and what the inspired 
writer so confidentlv affirms. 

It is important to keep in mind here what has been 
already noticed of the method of Hebrew narrative. The 
successive chapters of such a narrative lie often, to a con- 
siderable extent, parallel one with another. The narrator 
moves down by topics ; and, having taken up a theme, he 
finishes it. His next theme may begin very soon, in time, 
after the one began which he has finished, but he pays no 
attention to that. He completes what he has to say on 
the first subject, and then goes back to take up the next 



Grass, Herb, and Fruit-tree. 157 

Thus the two will frequently stand for a long distance side 
by side. 

So stand the two creations of this third day. The one 
is the uplifting of the continents ; and when the sacred 
writer begins to speak of it he follows it up to the end. 
The other is the production of vegetable life ; but this be- 
gins long before the other is ended, and goes along side 
by side with it. As the land is lifted above the water, the 
sediment deposited along the shores begins to develop a 
low order of vegetation. The seas are hot yet, but there 
are kinds of vegetation which can grow in water at a very 
high temperature. The germination of plants therefore 
follows very close upon the beginning of the uplift. The 
continents increase in size, and the orders of vegetation 
increase in number, and improve in character. So the 
two processes go steadily on together. The first day, 
the second day, and the third, are all in progress at the 
same time. The opening of the light, the fitting up of 
the atmosphere, and the double work of uplifting the land 
and starting new orders of vegetation, though successive 
as to their beginnings, are as to their chief history quite 
contemporaneous. They come in like the opening of an 
overture, where a single instrument sounds first, and one 
by one the others fall in till we have the full chorus. 



158 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE NOONDAY OF VEGETABLE LIFE. 

* I ^HERE was a period in this creative history when 
vegetation flourished in amazing luxuriance. It 
was not a time when the choicest products appeared, but 
a time when some of the lowlier creations assumed a par- 
ticularly stalwart growth. It was not a time of many 
timber-trees, and of gorgeous blossoms, and of luscious 
fruits, but it was a time when every continent was massed 
in one green wilderness, which wrapped as in a thick and 
furzy fleece the very farthest poles. This is what we mean 
by the noonday of vegetable life. Geologists speak of 
it as the carboniferous era, the name being given on ac- 
count of the immense quantities of carbon condensed at 
that epoch into vegetable production, and stored up for 
the ages that should come after. 

To understand this period we must carefully note three 
things. The first is, that our atmosphere, as already 
stated, was at an early period overloaded with carbonic 
acid gas, and that while in such a condition it would have 
been immediately fatal to any air-breathing animal. The 
second thing to notice is that this gas, which is so very 
noxious to men and animals, is essential to the growth of 
vegetation ; and that where it abounds vegetation is great- 



The Noonday of Vegetable Life. 159 

ly nourished. And the third thing to be noticed is, that if 
vegetable matter be massed together in proper conditions, 
it parts with its other elements, retains only or chiefly 
its carbon, and so becomes coal. The carbon in one pound 
of coal is sufficient, if set free by combustion, to suffocate 
ten men. How suffocating, then, must have been the at- 
mosphere, when it carried all the carbon, now solidified in 
the vegetable growth of the world, and in addition to this 
all that is contained in all our mines of coal. 

But this condition of things greatly favored the growth 
of plants. We feed our grass and grain by enriching the 
soil ; but in that age God fed the plants he had created by 
fattening the atmosphere. They breathed in richness at 
every pore. Moreover, that was an age when moisture 
was abundant. The continents were as yet half submerged. 
There were mists and showers coming and departing. 
There were wide land-locked lagoons. There were broad 
shallows along the shores. Amid this moisture the new 
life grew rampant. Besides, it was an epoch of great 
warmth. The earth-crust was not yet cooled as it is now, 
nor were there at the poles any great masses of ice and 
snow. The presence of carbonic acid gas in the atmos- 
phere, moreover, as has been asserted by Professor Tyn- 
dal, is a great check upon radiation ; and in an age when 
it was so abundant the earth was like a great greenhouse, 
roofed with a crystal covering from pole to pole. A trop- 
ical climate, therefore, prevailed everywhere ; and, betwixt 
light and heat, moisture and plant food in the atmosphere, 
vegetation reached a gigantic growth. 

Things which we are accustomed to see among our 
smallest and lowliest vegetable productions then shot up 



160 The Story of Creation. 

into enormous stature. There were rushes which grew 
thirty feet high. There were ferns which presented single 
fronds six and eight feet long. And club-mosses towered 
aloft like palms, or formed jungles in which a tiger might 
have made his lair, or a man have lost his way. The 
timber-trees, except a few pines, were not there — the oaks, 
the chestnuts, the cedars, the rosewood, the materials for 
ship-building and for house-furnishing, were wanting ; for 
there was as yet no use for them. All that would come 
in good time ; for the present it was sufficient that the 
earth produced a kind of vegetation which would make 
good coal. Every energy of that age was turned to that 
important economy. It was the day of coal-making. 

The process by which the coal was formed from this 
material is as interesting as was the growth of the vege- 
tation itself. Successive forests of these productions hav- 
ing arisen and fallen one upon the other, there came a 
change which heaped up the great mass as in a coal-pit, 
and covered it deep beneath the soil. The earth-crust 
was unsteady yet. Frequent convulsions were occurring. 
Here the land suddenly rose ; there it sunk as suddenly 
away, forming a great basin ; and in came the sea, carrying 
with it gravel, detritus, sediment, and rock, which were 
heaped upon the accumulated vegetation. Then it fer- 
mented, and grew hot ; still more encouraged by the hot 
rock underneath where it lay, and by the tepid seas that 
rolled above. It was roasted as in a coal-pit. It grew 
black and pure,, and was pressed by the superincumbent 
weight into solid form. Then another upheaval occurred, 
and all was lifted again out of the sea ; and when man 
appeared, he found it — a bed of coal. In some places the 



The Noonday of Vegetable Life. 



161 



process was repeated again and again, so that we have 
coal beds one above another ; and it shows what an enor- 
mous mass of vegetation was consumed in this process, 
that in one seam of coal only six inches thick, near Pitts- 
burgh, Pa., it is estimated that more carbon is to be found 
than at present rates is taken out of the atmosphere by 
all the vegetation of the globe in 1,200 years. 

A visit to a coal-mine will more than confirm all that is 
here declared. You may find there the print of those 
great fern-fronds as delicately marked as if the plant 




FOUND IN COAL. 



itself had been preserved in an herbarium. You may find 
your gigantic rushes there, and the great club-mosses ; 
and, in some cases, you may find tree-trunks erect there, 
with the roots still standing in the soil on which they 
grew. " These fossil-stumps," says Dr. Dawson, "are not 
uncommon in the roofs of coal-seams. In some places 
they are known tb the miners as ' coal-pipes,' and are 
dreaded by them in consequence of the accidents which 
21 



1 62 The Story of Creation. 

occur, from their suddenly falling after the coal which 
supported them has been removed. An old friend and 
helper of mine in carboniferous explorations had a lively 
remembrance of the fact that one of these old trees, fall- 
ing into the mine in which he was working, crushed his 
leg and gave him a limp for life." * 

This was the noontide of the third creative day. It was 
the time when God was slowly removing from our atmos- 
phere its deathly quality, and transmuting those noxious 
gases into the solid treasures which we find in our mines 
of coal. We have learned how to build ice-houses, and so 
to carry over the superfluous frigidity of our winters into 
midsummer, and use it then. In the same way God 
stored up in these great coal-cellars the superfluous heat 
of the carboniferous era, and we bring it out to warm our 
dwellings against the rigors of the winter air. Nor is this 
all. There is sunshine in that black coal. God laid up 
for us the unused brightness of that far-off day ; and we 
bring it out, to blaze again along our streets by night and to 
fill our homes with cheer. There is even more. Coal is 
energy — solid energy given out by the brightness of that 
early period, and kept in store for our day. And we have 
learned how to unbind that energy, and make it drive our 
rail-trains across the continents, and our steamers across 
the seas. Solid light, solid heat, solid energy — these 
etherial things packed away in portable form — heat, light, 
energy that enter into almost every product of modern 
civilization, measured by the cubic foot and weighed out 
and sold by the ton ! This is what God was laying up 
in store for us when he massed together that wondrous 

* "Earth and Man," page 141. 



The Noonday of Vegetable Life. 163 

vegetable growth which appeared on this carboniferous 
noonday. 

Says Professor Huxley in the " Contemporary Review," 
" Nature never is in a hurry, and seems to have had always 
before her eyes the adage, ' Keep a thing long enough and 
you will find a use for it.' She has kept her beds of coal 
for millions of years without being able to find much use 
for them. She has sent them down beneath the sea, and 
the sea-beasts could make nothing of them ; she has raised 
them up into dry land and laid the black veins bare, and 
still for ages and ages there was no living thing on the 
face of the earth that could see any sort of value in them ; 
and it was only the other day, so to speak, that she turned 
a new creature out of her workshop, who by degrees ac- 
quired sufficient wits to make a fire, and then to discover 
that the black rock would burn. . . . 

" Nature still waited for a return of the capital she had 
invested in the ancient club-mosses. The eighteenth cen- 
tury arrived, and with it James Watt. The brain of that 
man was the spore, out of which was developed the steam 
engine, and all the prodigious trees and branches of modern 
industry which have grown from this. But coal is as much 
an essential condition of this growth and development as 
carbonic acid is for that of a club-moss. . . . 

" But what becomes of the coal which is burnt in 
yielding the interest ? Heat comes out of it, light comes 
out of it, and if we could gather together all that goes up 
the chimney and all that remains in the grate, we should 
find ourselves in possession of a quantity exactly equal in 
weight to the coal. Nature is paid back, principal and 
interest at the same time; and she straightway invests 



1 64 



The Story of Creation. 



them (materials) in new forms of life, feeding them with the 
plants which now live. Thrifty Nature ! Surely no prod- 
igal, but most notable of housekeepers ! " It is not mere 
nature, however : it is God that worketh all in all. 



Opening of the Fourth Day. 165 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THE OPENING OF THE FOURTH DAY : SUN AND MOON. 

~W 7"E have now completed the first creative Triad, and 
must enter upon the second. The first three days, 
the last of which is a kind of double day, are disposed of : 
three more remain, and the last of these is a double day 
also. Day number four : that is the point at which we 
begin in this chapter, and it opens, as did "Day One," 
with a call for light. For the first day God said, "Let 
there be light : " for the fourth day he says, " Let there 
be lights ! " In response to the former call, the great, 
dark, nebulous mass became luminous : in response to 
the latter the sun began to blaze in the open sky. The 
lights for which God called, as this day was about to open, 
were the sun and the moon. The stars come into notice 
also, but only parenthetically, as it were, and at the close 
of the sixteenth verse of the chapter. 

The sun and moon are called "great lights." This 
illustrates the method of the writer. He describes things 
in perspective, taking his stand on the earth. There are 
fixed stars many times greater than our sun, but they are 
so far distant that they seem much smaller. And the 
moon, which is very much the smallest of the heavenly 
bodies visible to the naked eye, seems great because it is 



1 66 The Story of Creation. 

so near. Moses paints his picture like a true artist, 
giving those objects largest room on his canvas which 
occupy most space in the general field of vision. He 
gives us a photograph of the sky as it would have been 
taken had there been a photographer to catch the picture 
when sun, moon, and stars first appeared. The moon, 
though actually very small, stands in the picture large. 
The sun, though not the largest object visible, is repre- 
sented as the largest, because such was the picture in 
the sky. It will be worth something to remember this 
hereafter; Moses takes his stand on the surface of the 
earth, and paints things as they there appear. 

The " lesser light " of the two chiefly mentioned is 
said to "rule the night." This is perspective again, and 
the picture is photographed once more. The moon is in 
the sky as much by day as by night ; and it is visible, too, 
if we will take the pains to find it, but it is not so dis- 
tinctly marked in the picture. The sun outshines it. 
Few notice it. It is not the ruling orb. But when night 
comes, the scene changes. Now the moon begins to 
shine ; and sometimes its brightness is so great as almost 
to extinguish the stars. Milton noticed the queenly attri- 
butes of the moon, and certainly she rides conspicuous 
among the heavenly bodies that go careering across the 
sky. 

If we descend from our picture to the reality of things, 
of course we have a different story to tell. We find the 
moon to be a globe essentially like our own. It is made 
up of much the same material. It is passing through the 
same geological history. And as there stand upon our 
earth-rocks marks of the changes which have occurred in 



Opening of the Fourth Day. 



167 



our planet, so the telescope reveals to us on the moon's 
surface marks indicating the convulsions that luminary 
has experienced, and the utter barrenness to which it has 
come. 

According to the nebular hypothesis, the moon was 
once a part of the general mass now forming our planet, 




LUNAR CRATER. 



and was thrown off by the rapid revolution of that mass, 
as a drop of water might be thrown off from a swiftly 
revolving wheel. In its earlier stages it passed through 
the same conditions of molten rocks, crust-surface, and 
perhaps of condensing vapor and general submergence, 



1 68 The Story of Creation. 

through which we have traced our own world. But being 
a smaller body than the earth, it has cooled more rapidly, 
and in its present state gives us a dismal prophesy of 
what our world will perhaps yet become. Its atmosphere 
has quite disappeared. Its seas have quite sunk away 
into the rocky recesses beneath. Its internal fires have 
died out, and its surface is mottled with the craters of 
long-extinct volcanoes, which indicate what tremendous 
forces were once acting there. Of course no life remains. 
It would be curious to see a piece of rock from the moon. 
We should examine it with microscopic carefulness, and 
it might tell us a most interesting story. It might be a 
sedimentary rock, and so speak of the seas that once 
washed those now desolate shores. It might even contain 
a fossil to indicate what sort of life once reigned there. 
But at present we can only see that it is an unclad world ; 
a frozen, barren, dead, inhospitable world, of no use to 
itself, and important only in its bearing upon other parts 
of the solar system. 

We could not very well dispense with this little satel- 
lite, however, poor as it is. How cheerily it lights up our 
dark nights ! How mightily it pulls at our ocean waters, 
as they pass every day beneath its mysterious sway, giving 
us our tides ! How well, too, it serves its purpose, when 
the mariner takes his reckoning from it ; and what an im- 
portant work it does, keeping our world in proper balance 
as we journey round the sun ! Dreary, broken, lifeless 
thing, yet what a mission it fulfills, and how well its 
work is done ! 

The " greater light" was appointed to a more joyous 
service, and affords us a more inviting study. This is the 



Opening of the Fourth Day. 



169 



sun ; and in many respects he presents a strong contrast 
with his milder sister. The moon was flung off from our 
world ; but our world was flung off from the sun. The 
sun was never to us what the moon is ; but our world was 
once the same, perhaps, to the moon that the sun now is 
to us. The sun is a blazing star. So was our own world 
long ages ago ; and the moon of that day, basking in the 
nearer brightness and the warmer glow, may have had its 




sun - SPOT. 



life-forms, as our world has now. The moon is only about 
240,000 miles distant from us : the sun is more than 
90,000,000 miles away. The moon is only about 2,000 
miles in diameter : the sun is more than 800,000. The 
moon's entire bulk is only about one forty-ninth part as 
great as that of our globe : the sun's entire bulk is more 
than a million times greater than that of our globe. The 
solid body of the moon is in plain sight — its rocks, hills, 
craters, empty ocean beds : the solid nucleus of the sun 
is not in sight, but only the blazing envelope that incloses 
22 



170 The Story of Creation. 

it. This envelope is, indeed, rent apart at times, so as to 
show us what we call spots on the sun ; but we only gaze 
down into darkness as we bring one of these spots under 
our telescopes, and can gain little idea of what may be 
there. By the observations made during eclipses of the 
sun, it is discovered that outside the blazing envelope of 
the sun there is a kind of atmosphere; and this atmos- 
phere is seen to be wondrously upheaved by storms. Jets 
of crimson brightness, supposed by some to be burning 
hydrogen, sometimes shoot up from the sun's surface 
when these storms are raging, that reach an enormous 
height. Professor Swift, of Rochester, says, "These jets 
were seen by others and myself, during the great eclipse 
of August 7, 1869, extending to the height of 80,000 
miles." We analyze this brilliant mass by means of the 
spectroscope, and find out what the sun is made of. Hy- 
drogen, vapors of calcium, magnesium, sodium, iron, 
nickel, and very many other metals record themselves, 
besides one or two substances not known to our planet. 
Line 1,474 spectrum has no terrestrial representative ; 
but for the most part, the sun is made up of chemical 
substances with which we are familiar. 

The sun obeys the same laws and is working out the 
same geological history, apparently, as our planet. But, on 
account of its immense size, it lags behind in the race, and 
is to-day where our world was ages ago. If the present 
order of nature continues, however, it will at length be- 
come, in some important respects, a world like ours. Its 
luminous envelope will disappear. Its intense heat will 
abate. It will have its day of rock-crust, and perhaps of 
storm and boiling seas, and then a detritus will form, 



Opening of the Fourth Day. 171 

ready for the production of vegetable and animal life. 
How it will be furnished with light in that day, it would 
be difficult for us to conjecture ; but if that were provided, 
there is no reason why life should not yet flourish upon 
the sun, even as it does here. 

But when that epoch is reached, what will have become 
of our world ? According to certain intimations of Scrip- 
ture, it will be swept by and by with a cataclysm of fire ; 
but that has been its experience more than once already. 
The general tendency of all the heavenly bodies is toward 
refrigeration. And long before the sun cools down suffi- 
ciently to sustain life, our planet will probably be a cold, 
desolate thing, like the moon. We need not fear that this 
change will very soon overtake us, however. The cooling 
process is very slow ; and it has been ascertained that the 
mean temperature of the earth is not at present diminish- 
ing more than about the one three-hundredth part of a 
degree in 2,000 years. 



172 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

WORK OF THE FOURTH DAY : WAS IT A CREATION ? 

" A ND God made two great lights. And God set them 
in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon 
the earth." 

Many persons have read this statement as if it indicated 
that the sun and moon were not in existence until this 
fourth day. But we are not shut up to this view of the 
case, and there are good reasons why we should take the 
passage in a different way. Professor Bush says that this 
part of the narrative may be taken as parenthetical, and 
may be read as follows : " For God had made two great 
lights," referring to the original act by which he created 
the heaven and the earth. Dr. Murphy presents a similar 
view. "The heavens were created at the absolute be- 
ginning of things recorded in the first verse; and they 
included all other things except the earth." And Dr. 
Tayler Lewis says that " the sense of made is limited by 
the. infinitive that follows — He made them to rule." He 
cites a parallel passage from Ps. civ. 19, " He appointed 
the moon," etc. Indeed, there is scarcely any difference 
of opinion among writers on this subject. The word asa t 
usually rendered made, here signifies not a creation, but 
either an appointment to a purpose or a bringing out into 
use, or else it refers to the original creation, and has no 



Work of the Fourth Day. 173 

reference to any creation on this fourth day. The sun 
and moon, as to the matter composing them, were in ex- 
istence long before this, and were now simply set to do 
their work with reference to our world. They were not a 
sun and a moon to our planet, in the sense they now are, 
until this epoch. To one standing on the surface of the 
earth, they would not till now have been visible in the sky. 

Hugh Miller, who supposes each creative day completed 
before another begins, puts this day after the carboniferous 
epoch, and supposes that up to this time there had been 
no clear sky. There had been light indeed, as he holds, 
shining through the clouds : and in such light was it that 
the enormous growth of the coal period flourished ; but it 
was not bright sunshine. It was a period of "warm, 
moist, cloudy weather." Then the sun came out, and 
that constituted the fourth day. To a man standing on 
the surface of the earth, and witnessing this sudden ap- 
pearance of the blue sky and the heavenly bodies, it would 
have been a new creation. The natural exclamation of 
such a man, beholding the vision as Moses beheld it, 
would have been, " This is a new creation of God ! " 

But we are not obliged to resort to this theory. We 
can understand these days as overlapping each other ; and 
this one may have begun long before the previous day was 
ended. Before the coal period, before animal life appeared, 
while vegetation itself was but just beginning to appear, 
this fourth day may have dawned. In accordance with this 
view, Professor Guyot dates this epoch from the disap- 
pearance of the earth's photosphere. This photosphere 
was an envelope of great brightness that once encom- 
passed our planet, of which our Northern Lights may be 



174 The Story of Creation. 

regarded as the feeble and intermittent remains. That 
the sun has such an envelope we have already seen ; and 
on the nebular hypothesis, the earth preceded the sun in 
each of its historical changes. Professor Guyot holds that 
vegetation began to spring up here before that luminous 
envelope was swept away. While light came in upon our 
planet from this source, there was no need of the addi- 
tional light of a sun ; nor could either sun or moon or 
stars have been seen. This fiery sky shut in the earth 
like a shell ; and in so doing it shut out everything beyond. 
But gradually there came on a fading of this brilliancy ; 
and as it disappeared, the sun began to shine forth. It is 
only a bare supposition ; but if we might imagine that the 
sun was not lighted up as it now is, till our world was first 
deprived of its corona, we should have the problem of the 
fourth day beautifully solved. The sun being so much 
larger than our world is of course far behind it in all its 
geological changes ; and if we might suppose that it first 
became luminous at this epoch, we might say that it was 
no sun till the fourth day. On that day God made a sun. 
Previous to that it was an unfinished work. 

And while this would make it correct to say that the 
sun, as a sun, was not made till the fourth day, it would 
also give special significance to that dividing work of 
which so great account is made in the sacred story. " Let 
there be lights in the firmament to divide the day from 
the night. And God set them in the firmament of the 
heaven to divide the light from the darkness." So says 
the record. And if the somewhat doubtful supposition 
expressed above were admissible, these words would have 
great significance. On the theory of Hugh Miller, there 



Work of the Fourth Day. 175 

was as distinctly marked a division between day and night 
before this fourth day as afterward. The solar days were 
cloudy indeed, but each had its beginning and its ending 
as really then as now. Bui, if Professor Guyot's views 
be taken, then there was a long period previous to this 
day's work when there was no such thing as a division 
between day and night for our world. There Was bright- 
ness always and everywhere. The whole heaven was 
flooded with it. Our globe was perhaps turning on its 
axis then as now ; but there was no dark side to it, and so 
the revolution that now makes day and night was without 
effect. From east to west, from pole to pole, for long 
ages together, this blazing shell shut in our world, and 
one broad glare of fiery sky lit up the scene. 

A change was needed. Such creatures as God pro- 
posed to introduce upon our world would need alternations 
of day and night. Men, animals, even vegetation itself, 
if it were to develop into any such forms as God intended, 
would need frequently recurring periods of darkness. 
Every life-form was to be constructed on the plan of al- 
ternation and periodicity ; and to meet this necessity 
that eternal glare needed to be made to subside, and in 
place of it there needed to be established a division of 
night and day. 

This was done by the work of the fourth day. Our 
photosphere died out ; and, so far as that was concerned, 
our world was left dark. As that occurred, the sun came 
into view, and our globe was lighted from one side. On 
went the diurnal revolutions the same as before, and that 
brought every part of the world into alternate light and 
darkness once in every twenty-four hours. This fourth 



176 The Story of Creation. 

day did not begin away down this side the coal-period, as 
Hugh Miller supposed. It came in after the first faint 
dawn of vegetable life. That life had already begun to 
show itself, in some low form, along the margin of the yet 
hot seas ; but now it was to spring up magnificent all over 
the globe. This mighty sun was to urge it on. These al- 
ternations of day and night were the conditions established 
to give it full development. And, not for this only, but 
for the sake of that other kind of life which was now im- 
mediately to appear, God extinguished the earth's corona, 
and hung up instead the sun to blaze in yonder sky. 



The Sun and Moon as Time- keepers. 177 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE SUN AND MOON AS TIME-KEEPERS. 

" A ND let them be for signs and for seasons and for 
days and for years." First for signs — signals, 
by which to regulate human affairs. Men would perhaps 
exaggerate this view of the heavenly bodies, and would 
find in them "signs" in the superstitious meaning of that 
term. But, signs they were to be, nevertheless ; and this 
office was to be one of vast importance. Notice its effects 
on human industry. The special work at first given to 
our race was agriculture. Man was put into the garden 
"to dress it and to keep it;" and except as agriculture 
is sustained, civilization must decay. But agriculture in 
such a world as ours must be regulated by periods. When 
to plough and when to plant, when to look for a ripened 
harvest and when for the coming on of winter, are vital 
questions to men who till the soil. These things must 
not be left to guess-work : there must be something to 
depend upon. Therefore God arranged the apparent mo- 
tions of the heavenly bodies, and most of all the sun, so 
as to give a signal, at the proper time, for each of these 
things. 

This shows what is meant when it is also said that these 
time-keepers shall be "for seasons." It may be that so 

23 



178 



The Story of Creation. 



far as the moon is concerned, these seasons were to be 
religious festivals, such as for so many centuries have been 
regulated in the Jewish church by the lunar changes. 
But when the sun is considered, the seasons spoken of 
are the great natural divisions of the year. The apparent 
change of place which the sun performs in the heavens 
indicates the coming in of the four great seasons of the 
year. It more than indicates it : the sesaons are created 




THE EARTH AT THE VERNAL EQUINOX. 

by these changes. The extreme simplicity of the arrange- 
ment was not, perhaps, understood by Moses ; but the 
important facts of the case did not escape his observation. 
One important office to which God appointed the sun was 
to bring in the seasons of the year. 

It would have been perfectly easy to send the earth 
round the sun in such a way as to induce no change in 



The Sun and Moon as Time -keepers. 179 

the seasons at all. Indeed, that would have been in a 
high sense the natural way ; for unless some disturbing 
influence came in, equator and ecliptic would exactly cor- 
respond. But by some means God tipped the axle of the 
earth a little from its natural position ; and out of that 
comes that various exposure of different parts of our 
globe to the sun's rays, which creates our spring, our 
summer, our autumn, and our winter. This is impor- 
tant. It not only introduces an agreeable variety in our 
experience, as these seasons change, but is useful in train- 
ing us to forethought. Nay, the arrangement is even 
more important than this ; for without these changes our 
world could not have been as now the seat of a flourishing 
animal and vegetable life. 

"The vegetable clock is wound up to run just a year." 
And certainly some of our choicest kinds of vegetation 
need exactly this alternation between summer's heat and 
winter's cold. The fruits of our temperate zones will not 
flourish in the tropics, nor can we reproduce our thick, 
green turf there, to beautify the soil. True, other things 
appear in those lands of perpetual summer, which some- 
what take the place of our accustomed products in these 
changeful zones ; but we should have been great losers in 
this direction had there been no alternations in the seasons 
of the year. The same may be said of animal life. In 
many of its forms it requires the same change. Bird and 
beast pair and mate and nest and rear their young, even 
as the trees put forth their leaves and flowers, with the 
opening of the year. And in winter all quietly repose in 
some sort of at least partial hybernation. Man himself 
is so constituted as to need these changes, and generally 



180 The Story of Creation. 

quite runs down, if he lives where either summer or win- 
ter alone perpetually prevails. 

Time-keeping may seem a very humble service to which 
to set so magnificent a piece of furniture as the sun. 
Time-keeping can be done by machinery of our manufac- 
ture. Would you set the heavenly bodies doing the work 
of a wooden clock ? Yes, perhaps ; only they might do 
it better. God made them for signs and for seasons and 
for days and for years. Other uses to which they are put 
may seem more grand, but in nothing do they serve us 
better than in keeping time. "Every one must see," says 
Tayler Lewis, "that the exact knowledge of years and 
times and eras constitutes one of the great differences 
between the civilized and savage state, even where such 
knowledge is regarded as simply affecting those outward 
utilities that depend upon accurate canons of time. Next 
to the Bible, the most important book for the human race 
is doubtless the almanac. Without an accurate measure- 
ment of the day and year there could be no chronology ; 
without chronology there could be no history ; without 
history there could be no national or generic experience ; 
without such experience there could be no progress ; and 
without progress there could be no civilization." * 

If, next to the Bible, the most important book is the 
almanac, certainly for man in his present stage of civiliza- 
tion the most important instrument is a well-regulated 
clock. The clock and the almanac — these are the great 
regulators of mundane affairs. Imagine that with all our 
present variety of business in hand, we should by some 
strange mischance lose our reckoning. We cannot tell 

* " Six Days," page 186. 



The Sun and Moon as Time -keepers. i8i 

whether it be August or September. We do not know 
whether it is the 8th of the month or the 28th. What 
would be the consequence ? Who would answer for the 
commercial disarrangement which would grow out of it ? 
What would become of the value of notes, mortgages, 
bonds, or the process of payments and banking ? Or let 
the same confusion occur in regard to the day of the week, 
or the hour of the day. We cannot tell whether it is 
Sunday or Tuesday. We are not certain whether it be 
ten o'clock, or eleven, or twelve. What becomes of our 
rest-day ? And by what rule shall we start our steam- 
ships on their voyages, or run our rail-trains across the 
continent ? One week without these time-markers would 
throw everything into confusion. One year of that kind 
of life would arrest, if not abolish, our whole civilization. 
Nor would it be difficult to show that our thought itself 
is so regulated by this constant time-beat, that in the ab- 
sence of it our inner machinery would all run down, and 
our souls become chaotic and our life a dream. 

It was no small thing, therefore, which was done for 
us, when a great clock was constructed and hung up in 
the sky. God's clock has two hands. The sun-hand 
gives us the long measurement and the moon-hand the 
shorter ; and each has its subdivisions peculiar to itself. 
We have time-pieces of human contrivance which we re- 
gard as quite marvelous, because they give not only the 
minutes and the hours, but because they give us the day 
of the week and the month of the year. But God's clock 
gives us, by the small hand, the lunar month and the 
moon's quarters, very nearly marking off, also, the week, 
besides the rise and fall of the ocean tides ; while by the 



1 82 The Story of Creation. 

large hand we get the year, the vernal and autumnal equi- 
nox, the summer and winter solstice, the four seasons, 
and the days and fractions of a day, down to the mere 
fragment of a second. 

Every chronometer of human construction takes its 
time-measure from these chronometers in the skies ; and 
as every such time-piece needs frequent winding up, so is 
each liable to many accidents, and subject to more or less 
inaccuracies. - A watch that would run for a year without 
gaining or losing five minutes of time, and one that for 
the whole year would not once need rewinding, would be 
quite a marvel. We are obliged to take good care of our 
time-pieces, to brush the dust from the wheels, and to 
feed them now and then with fresh oil. We regulate 
them by a " regulator;" and, in the last resort, regulate 
all the "regulators" themselves by the sun. There we 
find a common standand, and one upon which we can 
always depend. It needs no dusting. Its wheels never 
stop for want of oil. Its motions began, who shall tell 
what ages ago ? and with what perfect accuracy its move- 
ments occur, let any one calculate who can, after noticing 
the nice predictions of the astronomers, and their subse- 
quent fulfillment, when there occurs a transit of Venus, 
or an eclipse of the sun. 

"A single evening's watching," says Dr. Burr, in his 
" Ecce Ccelum," u is enough to show us that the axis of 
the earth points nearly at the North Star ; that the motion 
around it is easterly ; that it is a perfectly uniform motion, 
just the same distance being made in the same time. So 
much a single evening can show us. But it would take a 
great many evenings to show us another striking fact, 



The Sun and Moon as Time-keepers. 183 

none the less sure, viz., that the axial revolution is always 
performed in exactly the same time. It is in evidence 
that our day has not varied the hundredth part of a second 
in two thousand years." 

So closely runs the great chronometer. And it is liable 
to no accidents, and it never runs down. 



184 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

HE MADE THE STARS ALSO. 

r I ^HE first chapter of Genesis was written for an im- 
mediate purpose. It was intended indeed to reveal 
to after ages the true account of creation, but it was also 
intended as a protest against the prevalent idolatry of 
those times. The age in which it was prepared, and the 
nation among whom the writer and his people had been 
dwelling, were madly set upon the worship of false gods. 
Among the objects of idolatrous worship, were the heav- 
enly bodies. In this chapter, therefore, the writer teaches 
that these supposed deities are only a part of the general 
order of nature, each having been created by the one true 
God. Of the sun and the moon he takes the more par- 
ticular notice, because they were not only conspicuous 
objects, but because they stood very high in the Egyptian 
Pantheon. Not to omit anything, however, that might be 
seized upon in the heavens for idolatrous worship, he adds 
a sentence to the general account, saying, " He made the 
stars also." He had said this in effect at the beginning 
of the chapter ; for when he said that " God created the 
heaven," that of course included all the heavenly bodies. 
But here he makes up his items ; and, to leave nothing 
out, he adds, " the stars also." 



He made the Stars also. 185 

By the phrase " the stars " he means to designate all 
those apparently smaller lights which appear in our sky. 
Strictly speaking, the sun is a star ; and, in the same sense 
as are some of the other bodies included in this term here, 
the earth is a star, and so is the moon. But the writer 
draws his picture in perspective once more, and calls 
those things stars, and only those, which seem such in our 
evening sky. Everything shining at any time in our vis- 
ible heavens, except sun and moon, is in this view a star. 

Observation soon shows that these stars are of two or 
three general sorts. Were you to stand upon the deck of 
a ship in mid-ocean, where there would be nothing to in- 
terrupt your vision, and watch these twinkling points, you 
would see them all moving slowly from east to west across 
the sky. One after another, they would climb up out of 
the eastern horizon, ascend the blue vault over your head, 
and then go down in the west till they seemed to sink 
beneath the water. You would notice the remarkably 
straight course each one pursued. You would see how 
precisely they kept their relative distances, the one from 
the other. And you would observe the exact time in 
which they all moved. Regularity, uniformity, persistence 
each in its course — these, to your mind, would seem the 
attributes of the stars. And if you ever spoke of "the 
stars in their courses," the phrase would represent immu- 
table law. 

But if you were very accurate in your observations, and 
if you were to keep up your deck-watch for several nights 
in succession, you would at length find a star somewhere 
that seemed to have fallen out of its place, and if you 
continued your observations for some years you would see 
25 



1 86 The Story of Creation. 

still more. One night a star would be behind time ; an- 
other night it would be ahead of time ; and now it would 
turn out from a straight path a little on this side, and now 
on that, making a zig-zag course across the sky. And, 
after a little, very likely you would discover another such 
star, and then another, till perhaps you had found half 
a dozen in all, whose movements were so uncertain that 
you would not know what to make of them. You would 
see something like 3,000 stars, each of which kept its 
place from year to year ; and which you would, therefore, 
naturally call " fixed stars." But there would be these 
half dozen curious, erratic things, which the Greeks used 
to call planetai, and which we call planets or wanderers, 
which would give no account of themselves. 

There would be a third class. Some fine night you 
would encounter a strange visitor in the sky. Very likely 
he would seem larger than any star in the firmament ; and 
there would be a long train of light behind him ; and, this 
train in some cases resembling a great lock of white hair, 
you might be disposed to call him Coma, the comet, the 
hairy creature. Such strange visitors in former days 
created great consternation among men ; and many were 
the objurgations and excommunications by which they 
were bidden to begone. We are not so well acquainted 
with them even now as to be able to satisfy all our curiosity 
in regard to their movements ; but they are no longer 
feared as likely to do us any harm. 

If your night-watch should occur about the middle of 
August or of November, you would be likely to witness 
the coming and going of still another kind of " star." It 
would start suddenly from some point in the heavens, and 






He made the Stars also. 



187 



shoot rapidly to another point, leaving a bright streak 
behind it for an instant, and then disappear ; and so you 
would call it a shooting star. These shooting stars some- 
times fall to the earth, where they are picked up and 
examined. They are called in that case metorites, or 
meteoric stones, and are sometimes of great size. There 
is one in the British Museum that weighs three tons. 




GENERAL VIEW OF A COMET. 



But generally they are very small ; and being small they 
burn up, as they come into our atmosphere, and never 
reach the earth.- Great numbers of these objects are 
supposed to be performing a journey round the sun, the 
same as our world does ; but only here and there one 
comes near enough to us to be seen ; nor indeed would 
they be seen at all except as they are set on fire. They 



1 88 The Story of Creation. 

ignite by friction against our atmosphere, just as a match 
ignites when you scratch it on the wall. 

It has been ascertained that the orbits of these meteor- 
ites correspond very curiously with those of the comets ; 
and some hold that comets are but clouds of meteorites 
traveling together. " The observations made on the beau- 
tiful comet of 1874," says Lockyer, "have shown that 
possibly the heat and light of a comet may be due to the 
clashing together in space of these very bodies which, 
when they fall into our air, give rise to the appearance of 
falling stars. For we know that comets are not very hot, 
that they do partly consist of solid particles or masses, 
and that the vapor given off is that of a substance known 
to exist in meteorites." 

So then we have four kinds of "stars," — the fixed 
stars, the planets, the comets, and the shooting-stars. 
They are all interesting objects of study ; and in each we 
may learn some lesson of the power and the goodness of 
God. But the comets and the shooting stars are of less 
importance apparently in the system of nature, and may 
therefore be dismissed from the present studies. The 
planets and the fixed stars, however, must have our more 
particular attention. 



The Solar System. 189 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 



THE SOLAR SYSTEM. 



TT was observed, at a very early date in the history of 
astronomy, that each of the planetai accomplished a 
perfect cycle. That is, though it was apparently subject 
to great irregularities, it always came back at length to 
the place where it began, and what seemed irregular- 
ities, followed each other in an orderly succession. This 
showed that there was a law in the case ; and many were 
the attempts made to give that law expression. For a 
long time, however, it was assumed, as the first and unde- 
niable postulate in this problem, that the earth was sta- 
tionary. Had we not the evidence of the senses for it ? 
Was the ground ever known to tip toward the east or 
toward the west ? Were the seas ever emptied out of 
their basins ? Did men ever find themselves with their 
heads downwards ? Nay, was it not running against 
Scripture itself to believe anything else ; for is it not 
written that " the world also shall be established, that it 
shall not be moved " ? * So this was the starting point in 
all investigation with respect to the motions of the planets 
— the earth is established that it can not be moved. 
Of course, it followed from this that the earth was the 

* Ps. xcvi. 10. 



190 The Story of Creation. 

centre of the universe; for if it did not move, then sun 
and stars moved round it, and that with prodigious velocity. 
But those planets, what could be done with them ? Cycles 
and epicycles, spheres and superior spheres, all this was 
brought into account, and the problem grew more, and 
more complicated, until at last a man arose who ventured 
to suggest that the earth itself might be one of the planetai, 
and that the central immovable object in the system was 
perhaps the sun. This was Copernicus. Taking a hint 
from certain speculations of Pythagoras, he proceeded to 
evolve his system. His calculations were not perfect ; 
and it needed the after work of Kepler, Galileo, and New- 
ton to complete the system ; but from Copernicus it took 
its name, and is now the recognized system of the astron- 
omers of the whole world. 

It might well have been that the movements of the 
planets should seem irregular, when seen from our world ; 
for we ourselves are also in rapid motion, and that, in a 
two-fold direction. Whirling continually on its own axis, 
and flying at the same time like an arrow on its orbit, 
our planet would seem to present a very unstable standing- 
place from which to make accurate observations ; but the 
difficulties were successively overcome, and the problem 
was demonstrated. With Copernicus it was scarcely more 
than a theory, and he uttered it with diffidence, reasoned 
for it, often absurdly, and clung still to some of the worst 
features of the former attempts at a system of astronomy. 
But when Kepler applied his severe mathematical analysis 
to the question, step by step was mounted, till he stood on 
that commanding height where he could defy all dispute. 
A proud moment was that when he demonstrated the last 



The Solar System. 191 

of his three great laws. "Nothing holds me," he says, 
" I will indulge my sacred fury. If you forgive me, I 
rejoice : if you are angry, I can bear it. The die is cast. 
The book is written, to be read either now or by posterity, 
I care not which. It may well wait a century for a reader, 
since God has waited six thousand years for an observer." * 

The planets, all sought out and counted, number eight ; f 
besides which, several of these are attended each by one 
satellite or more than one ; and there is a family of nearly 
two hundred little planets known as asteroids, forming, a 
group by themselves. The full-grown children of our sun, 
however, are eight in number, six sons and two daughters. 
Their names are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, 
Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The family of asteroids 
have their names also, and a home between the orbits of 
Mars and Jupiter ; but they need not here be mentioned 
further. 

Me-rcury is supposed to be the planet nearest the sun. 
If there be one nearer, it has not yet been discovered; 
and Mercury stands off from the great central orb about 
37,000,000 miles. Then comes Venus, which is about 
66,000,000 miles from the sun, and which we recognize 
alternately as the morning and the evening star. This 
planet, viewed through a good telescope, shows all the 
changes that we recognize in our moon. When it is on 
the side of the sun nearest us, it shows as a faint crescent. 
When it is opposite, it is shaped like the full moon. In 
the one case this planet is only 25,000,000 miles from 

* Mitchell's "Planetary and Stellar Worlds," page 98. 
t A ninth planet, called Vulcan, is supposed to exist, very close to the sun ; 
but the case has not been settled at this writing. 



IQ2 



The Story of Creation. 



us, and in the other 157,000,000. The changes of the 
planet in apparent form, however, so balance these dis- 
tances as to give it a brightness at all times very nearly 
the same. 

Next after Venus comes our own planet, the Earth. 
Then comes Mars, our next-door neighbor beyond. Mars, 
Venus and Mercury are all smaller worlds than ours ; the 
other planets are much greater. The average distance of 
Mars from us is about 50,000,000 miles ; but sometimes 




DIFFERENT PHASES OF VENUS. 



he is not much more than half so far away; and he is 
more like our world than is any other planet in the solar 
system. We can see in Mars, as in our own world, a di- 
vision of land and water ; but in Mars the water-surface 
is less than the land. His inclination, or tipping, is also 
much the same as ours, being 29 degrees to our 23, and 
so he has the same changes of seasons as we do. Seen 
through a good telescope he shows a white spot at each of 



The Solar System. 



193 



the poles, which enlarges in his winters, and partly disap- 
pears during his summers, and so is thought to be ice and 
snow. The light part of the drawing in the accompany- 
ing figure is land ; the dark is water. On the whole, so 
far as we can judge, an inhabitant of this world might be 
transferred to the planet Mars, and feel quite at home. 
But this can not be said of any other planet in the system. 




MARS. 



Passing over the family of the asteroids, some of which 
according to Lockyer are not larger than " a good Scotch 
estate," we next come to Jupiter. This is an enormous 
world, and with its four satellites it constitutes almost a 
solar system of itself. Its bulk is 1,300 times greater 
than that of our globe ; and this accounts for it, perhaps, 
that though it was born long before our planet, it lingers 
yet in those geological stages through which our world 
passed so long ago. It is a world only partly condensed 
25 



194 



The Story of Creation. 



yet ; for though it is 1,300 times larger than our globe it 
is only 300 times heavier, showing that its density is less 
than one-quarter that of the earth. Its inclination also is 
very small, so that there are no changes of seasons there ; 
and it is marked by numerous dark belts, which are con- 
tinually changing, as if bridges of bright cloud were being 
thrown over the dark spaces. It is also very much flat- 
tened at the poles, and may be in part in a molten condi- 




SATURN. 



tion. It is not likely that we should very well enjoy a 
home on that grand great world. It is not finished yet. 

Next comes Saturn with his golden crown and his eight 
satellites. No other planet in the system is so well calcu- 
lated to attract attention as this. Its rings are three in 
number ; the outer two being quite bright, while the inner 
one, known as the "crape ring," is only just visible in a 
large telescope, the ball of the planet being seen through it. 
These rings are always nearly edgewise toward us, and are 



The Solar System. 195 

so thin that in certain positions of the planet they can 
scarcely be seen. Saturn has much the same constitution 
as Jupiter, and like that planet is still in an early geologi- 
cal stage. Its axis is inclined about 26 degrees, and when 
it becomes a habitable world it will have much the same 
seasons as the earth does now. 

After Saturn comes Uranus, 1,753,000,000 miles from 
the sun. It is a planet with a diameter about four times 
as great as that of the earth, but its density is only about 
one-fifth as great ; and it is known to have four moons. 
Next comes Neptune, 2,746,000,000 miles from the sun, 
with a diameter a little greater than that of Uranus, and 
a density a little less. Beyond this, it is not probable that 
any other planet will be found. The distance from Nep- 
tune to the sun seems very great. A rail train running 
at the rate of 30 miles an hour, night and day, without 
stops for wood or water, would accomplish the journey in 
about 20,000 years. But this, as measured by the distance 
of the nearest fixed star, is very little. There is no fixed 
star nearer to us than about 7,000 times the distance of 
Neptune. 

Our own world occupies a kind of middle place in the 
solar system, being neither so near the sun as to be 
scorched by his heat, nor yet so remote as to be beyond 
the influence of his kindly beaming. It has also reached 
a kind of middle epoch in its geological history, being 
neither an unfinished world like Jupiter, nor a dead world 
like the moon. As the temperate zones of our planet are 
the chief seat of human life and of Christian civilization, so 
is our world set in that middle place in the system where 
it can support the best kind of life, and so has it reached 



196 The Story of Creation. 

that middle epoch in its geological history most favorable 
to the successful working out of the problem of our hu- 
manity, and the deeper problem of salvation through our 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

A good deal has been said, at one time and another, 
about the probable populousness of the planets. But, so 
far as we can judge, with the possible exception of Mars, 
no planet but our own is in a condition to sustain life. 
Mars may possibly have such life as the earth exhibited 
about the time of the Tertiary Epoch, and the moon may 
have passed a brief life stage, some ages ago ; but we 
have no reason to believe that the other planets are at 
present the abode of intelligent, sentient beings. True, 
we can say that God is not limited in his creative power, 
and so we can say that though the other planets are so 
unlike our own, he may have created a kind of beings 
who can have their home there ; but when we go so far as 
that, we may as well suppose that he has created beings to 
live where there are no worlds at all. In this matter we 
must reason, if at all, by analogy. Between those other 
worlds and our own there is a strong resemblance. They 
are composed of the same chemical substances. They 
obey the same general laws. They are working out the 
same geological history. And, as most of them are in 
that condition where life was impossible for our own world, 
we naturally judge that life is impossible with them. Some 
of them are dark worlds — very remote from the sun. 
Some of them are terribly bright worlds, covered with a 
glare that must be as blinding as darkness itself. Some 
of them are dead worlds, frozen worlds. But the chief of 
them are unfinished worlds, reeking yet with heavy vapors, 



The Solar System. 197 

and too intensely heated to consolidate into healthful land 
and water. Uses for those worlds there will be, by and 
by, no doubt, even as now for our own. For the present, 
however, their chief service is one on behalf of this little 
planet, and of its lowly and immortal creature, man. 



198 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 



THE FIXED STARS. 



J"N strict astronomical speech no planet is ever called a 
star. So, what has been said of those apparently 
vagrant bodies belongs properly to another department 
of this general subject. We have given it mention, be- 
cause it has the notice of the sacred writer. He was not 
framing a scientific treatise, but a popular narrative, and 
so he included the planets among the stars. 

We now come to that other class of the celestial bodies, 
which more properly receive this name. We notice that 
they maintain apparently the same relative distances both 
from ourselves and from one another, and so we call them 
the fixed stars. We shall find, by and by, some reason 
to doubt whether they are so firmly fixed as they seem ; 
but, owing to their great distance from us, their variations 
are slight and slow, and so they are put in a class by 
themselves. They have other peculiarities also. Scien- 
tific men have learned to distinguish reflected light from 
direct radiation ; and it has been found that while all the 
planets shine by reflected light, these stars emit a light of 
their own. This is one of the distinguishing qualities of 
our sun. It is self-luminous. The moon shines only be- 
cause the sun shines upon it ; but the sun shines with a 



The Fixed Stars. 199 



light of its own. It is in that respect like the fixed stars. 
Indeed, it is a fixed star ; and being much nearer to us 
than any other star, we can discover by it what a fixed 
star is. 

The sun is much larger than any one of the planets. 
Indeed, it is five hundred times larger than all the com- 
bined planetary bodies in our system ; and, so far as we 
have been able to measure them, all the fixed stars are 
large, like our sun. Some of them are many times larger 
than he. There is a star known as Alpha Centauri, which 
is about twice as large. Sirius gives as much light as 
sixty-three such suns as ours. Capella is equal to 430 
such suns. Arcturus is equivalent to 516. And Alcyone, 
in the constellation Pleiades, though not exactly measured 
yet, is reckoned by Dr. Burr, in his " Ecce Ccelum," to 
shine with the light of 12,000 suns ! We call our sun a 
king ; and sometimes we say how modestly the little stars 
retire before him when he comes forth from his eastern 
chambers to shine upon the world. But he is not a very 
great king, after all ; and is but one among a thousand 
like him. In one respect, however, he shows himself 
possessed of kingly quality. Kings govern not by power 
alone, but by keeping up appearances ; and when those 
"little stars" seem so modestly retiring from the presence 
of this august monarch, it is only a little kingcraft on. his 
part, blinding our vision by his blazing presence, so that 
we cannot see them. 

The number of the fixed stars is very great. Standing 
at the equator, on a clear night, one sees with the naked 
eye about 3,000. This for one hemisphere : for both we 
should have about 6,000. But the moment a telescope is 



200 The Story of Creation. 

brought to bear upon the field, the number enlarges. A 
single patch of light in the Milky Way, not larger than 
the moon, unfolds under this closer scrutiny into a field 
packed with some thousands of these great suns. You 
cannot count them : they sweep too soon out from the field 
of vision. But the best estimate puts the number in that 
one little place at 50,000. Herschel held his glass for fifteen 
minutes toward one of these luminous places, and saw an 
army of not less than 100,000 of these brilliant things go 
by. Well, the Milky Way is all mottled with patches of 
light like these ; and, to the right of it and to the left of 
it, though in less profusion, these great suns are scattered 
broadcast like seed-wheat on the autumn fields. Inspira- 
tion has presented many thoughts of the greatness of 
God, but never anything greater than that word of the 
Psalmist : " He telleth the number of the stars : he calleth 
them all by their names." * 

The distance of these bodies is even a greater wonder 
than their number. And the triumph of the human mind 
in measuring those distances indicates the marvelous 
nature of its powers. We thought it a great distance from 
the sun to the outermost planet of our system. Three 
thousand millions of miles outreaches our conceptions 
almost as much as infinity itself. But the nearest fixed 
star is not less than twenty millions of millions of miles 
away. Our long-measure unit, the mile, becomes almost 
useless in the reckoning ; and we have to resort to calcu- 
lations made from the velocity of light. 

It is not long since the velocity of light was ascertained. 
The discovery was made by the study of the eclipses of 

* Ps. cxlvii. 4. 



The Fixed Stars. 201 

Jupiter's moons. Very accurate tables were constructed 
by which such eclipses were predicted, and it was found 
that in some cases the eclipse came on too soon, and in 
others too late, to match the figures in the tables. On 
further investigation it was found that the eclipses that 
occurred too soon were witnessed when that planet and 
our own were on the same side of the sun, and so com- 
paratively close together. Corresponding to this it was 
found that the eclipses that occurred " behind time " hap- 
pened when Jupiter was on the opposite side of the sun 
from us, and so at a great distance off. Roemer, a Danish 
astronomer, took up the study, and showed that this irreg- 
ularity arose from the fact that light traveled through 
space with a measurable velocity. When Jupiter was on 
the side of the sun opposite our planet, he was of course 
the whole diameter of the earth's orbit farther from us 
than when he was on the same side with us. This diameter 
was proximately ascertained to be 190,000,000 miles ; and 
the eclipses were apparently retarded about sixteen min- 
utes when that distance was interposed. That is, it took 
the light about sixteen minutes to cross that interval. 
This was 12,000,000 miles a minute. This was 192,000 
miles a second. Closer calculations have somewhat modi- 
fied this conclusion, however, and at present the velocity 
of light is reckoned at about 185,000 miles for every 
second of time. 

Proceeding upon this basis, M. Peters, after a profound 
calculation of the mean parallax of the stars of each mag- 
nitude, gives the following statement : " Stars of the first 
magnitude send their light to us in about seventeen years ; 
those of the second magnitude in about thirty years ; 
26 



202 The Story of Creation. 

those of the third magnitude in about forty-five years ; 
those of the fourth magnitude in about sixty-five years ; 
those of the fifth magnitude in ninety years ; those of the 
sixth magnitude, the most remote visible to the naked eye, 
send us their light after a journey through space of one 
hundred and thirty years. While the distance of the 
lowest of telescopic stars visible in Herschel's twenty-feet 
reflector is such that their light does not reach the eye 
for 3,541 years after it starts on its tremendous journey." 
Of course these calculations are very general, and can 
only be taken as approximating the facts in the case ; for 
a star of the third magnitude is not necessarily any more 
distant than one of the second, but may be simply a 
smaller sun. In a few instances, however, the parallax of 
a fixed star has been accurately determined ; and we are 
able to state beyond reasonable doubt that light, which 
shoots at the amazing velocity of 185,000 miles in one 
second of time, is three years in passing from the nearest 
fixed star to our world ! 

As our sun has a retinue of planets, so it has been sup- 
posed that each of these other suns also is made to light 
and warm a system of worlds that circle round it. Analogy 
suggests this ; but while there is a general analogy among 
the heavenly bodies, there is by no means perfect uniform- 
ity. God loves variety ; and in the sphere of the starry 
heavens he has made no two things precisely alike. Thus, 
in our solar system it might be assumed, if we knew only 
the planet Jupiter, that as he had four satellites each other 
planet would also have satellites less or more. But such 
proves not to be the case. So with our sun. The planets 
are its satellites ; and we have found eight of them. But 






The Fixed Stars. 203 



that does not prove that the next sun has satellites, or the 
next, or the next. So when the conjecture is made that 
each fixed star is the centre of a solar system, we must 
understand it to be a conjecture only; and when to this 
conjecture is added another, often made, that each planet 
in each of these myriad systems is the abode of life, we 
must understand that this is a still remoter conjecture; 
and when it is further supposed that such life is crowned, 
as is the case in our world, by intelligence and immortality, 
conjecture is piled upon conjecture till we have lost all 
solid footing. And yet Dr. Chalmers, in his " Astronom- 
ical Discourses," is at the pains to answer an objection 
against the Christian religion, based upon heaped-up con- 
jectures of just this sort. " How can it be, that with such 
a mighty population in the universe, God should send his 
Son to die for this insignificant race of ours ? " Mighty 
population? indeed, if we admit your conjectures, so it is ; 
but it is sufficient to say that it will be time enough to 
answer your objection after your conjectures have been 
confirmed. At present, all we know on the subject is, 
that just here is a race of immortal beings, and that for 
their redemption God gave up his only-begotten Son. 



204 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



THE STAR - SYSTEMS. 



A N apparent grouping of the stars is perceptible even 
to the most ordinary observer ; and from the earliest 
ages men have been accustomed to notice particular con- 
stellations and to give them names. Thus we have a belt 
of such groups, extending entirely around the visible 
heavens, through which the sun seems to pass in his an- 
nual journey, known as the constellations of the zodiac ; 
while both north and south of this belt the sky is mapped 
off into other constellations, to each of which a name has 
also been given. This process of naming the stars is 
carried even further ; for each star in each constellation 
has a name. Beginning with the brightest, which is always 
marked by the first letter iii the Greek alphabet (the letter 
Alpha), the second brightest is named by the second letter, 
Beta, and the third by the third letter, until the alphabet 
is exhausted, when the numbers, I, 2, 3 and so on are used. 
Thus Alpha Lyrae means the brightest star in the constel- 
lation Lyra, or the Harp, and Beta Cygni represents the 
second brightest star in the constellation Cygnus, or the 
Swan. Special names are also applied to particular stars, 
as Vega to Alpha Lyrae, and Sirius to Alpha Canis Majoris, 
and so on. By this system it is not difficult, so far as the 



The Star -systems. 205 

heavens visible to the naked eye are concerned, to call the 
stars by name. 

The constellations thus marked, however, are grouped 
simply by appearance. Their apparent proximity, and 
the curious shapes they form, depend " mostly upon the 
direction from which we see them. And to find real 
groups of stars, groups that have a manifest physical re- 
lation star to star, is quite another thing. Such groups 
are discoverable, however ; and they constitute a study of 
the deepest interest to every man who would understand 
the wondrous works of God. Thus we have what are 
known as multiple stars. These go round each other, or 
round a centre common to them all. The motion of one 
of these stars round another is much like the motion of 
the earth round the sun ; only, while the earth makes its 
orbit in a year, the shortest known revolution of one of 
these stars in its orbit is thirty-six years. These multiple 
stars are quite numerous. No less than 800 systems of 
the kind have already been discovered, and the number is 
increasing as astronomers pursue their researches. Gen- 
erally, but not always, such a group appears at first glance 
as a single star. The telescope shows it usually as one 
large star with a smaller , one revolving around it. But 
such systems often embrace not only two stars each, but 
three or more. In the constellation Pleiades not less than 
fourteen stars are found revolving round a common centre. 
Besides these multiple stars, we have what are known 
as star-clusters. A few of these are visible to the naked 
eye, forming each a little white patch on the sky, like a 
small fragment from the Milky Way ; and some of these, 
when looked at through a telescope, are seen to be closely 



206 



The Story of Creation. 



packed groups of stars, forming together a kind of system. 
There is a beautiful cluster of this sort in the constella- 
tion Hercules. It was discovered by Halley, as far back 
as 1 7 14, and was not at first known to be composed of 
stars. It was a white patch in the sky ; of what nature no 
one could say. But modern instruments have revealed 




CLUSTER IN HERCULES. 



its true character. Professor Mitchell calls it an " Island- 
Universe ; " and supposes it not inferior in extent to our 
Milky Way. He adds, " No one can behold this magnifi- 
cent object for the first time without exclamations of 
wonder." Another of these magnificent objects is known 
as the Southern Cluster, and was resolved by Sir John 



The Star - systems. 207 

Herschel during his explorations in the south. Its posi- 
tion is such as to render it invisible in our latitude. Her- 
schel regarded it as a globular cluster, and one of vast 
extent. He also observed a marked difference in the 
color of the central portions and exterior stars : the inte- 
rior being of rose color, while the exterior is pure white. 
These varieties of color are far more vividly represented 
in the southern hemisphere than in the north. Yet they 
are visible everywhere, particularly in the binary systems. 

Besides these star-clusters, we have a class of white 
sky-patches which no telescope has yet resolved. And to 
some of these the new instrument, the spectroscope, has 
been applied with such success as to show that they are 
of a nature entirely different from stars, or collections of 
stars. Their cloud-like appearance has given them the 
name of nebulae. One of these nebulae is found in the 
constellation Lyra, and is known as the ring nebula. " It 
appears," says Professor Mitchell, " as a ring of misty 
light, hung in the heavens, with a diameter as large as 
the moon when seen by the naked eye." It is not sup- 
posed that this is a true nebula, — though as yet it has not 
been resolved, — but rather that it is a vast congeries of 
stars united in one grand system. The object is so remote 
as to be quite invisible to the naked eye, and it is esti- 
mated that its light could not reach us in less than twenty 
or thirty thousand years. 

It is proper in this connection to notice also certain 
objects known as nebulous stars. These are not clusters 
or systems, but single stars, each of which seems sur- 
rounded by a kind of fog. " It was an object of this sort," 
says Professor Mitchell, " which first suggested to Sir W. 



208 



The Story of Creation. 



Herschel his great theory of the formation of suns out of 
a nebulous fluid. He thought it impossible to account 
for the central location of stars, surrounded by nebulous 
matter, in any way except by supposing this to be a sort 
of atmosphere attracted to and sustained in its spherical 
form by the power of the central body. Specimens are 




RING NEBULA. 



found in which there is a mere condensation of light at 
the centre ; others in which this central light is brighter ; 
and so up to a perfect star with a surrounding haze. 
In some instances the star is found with a stream of light 
issuing from it like the tail of a comet. These are cer- 
tainly objects of very difficult explanation, if we abandon 



The Star -systems. 209 

the idea of nebulous matter." These nebulous stars rep- 
resent to us, perhaps, the process, and its various stages, 
by which our solar system was formed. A nebula kept 
growing smaller and rounder, till at the centre, where the 
pressure was greatest, there began to appear a star. The 
whole mass was whirling round this centre, very rapidly, 
and as it grew smaller it threw off a ring of vapor like 
the ring around the planet Saturn. This ring after a 
while broke, and formed a globular mass of vapor which 
by and by formed a planet. Then there was another ring, 




NEBULOUS STAR. 



and another planet, the star or sun at the centre growing 
all the time brighter and hotter; and this process con- 
tinued until there was finished a solar system. 

This was one kind of nebula. The other kind was 
vaster. Great islands of nebulous matter were planted in 
space ; and were put under physical law, when at once 
they began condensing into stars and systems. The ring 
nebula in Lyra is such an island ; the star-cluster in Her- 
cules is such an island ; and our own Milky Way is such 
27 



210 The Story of Creation. 

an island. Our sun is a single star of the Milky Way ; 
the entire star-cluster being apparently arranged in disk 
form, like a great mill-stone. There is a split in one edge 
of the mill-stone ; and our sun lies near that opening. 

How many of these star-islands, incipient or completed, 
there may be, distributed through infinite space, we can 
only conjecture. The one of which our own solar system 
forms a part is sufficient to fill our conceptions of a uni- 
verse ; for the suns it reveals even in a very small space 
of open sky, where they stand thickest, have to be counted 
by millions. But others like it loom up in the vast hori- 
zon, as the adventurous navigator turns his prow outward 
and attempts to explore those unknown seas. Islands, 
we call them ; but each island is a vast pebble-bank, and 
each pebble is a mighty sun. We begin with the binary 
system and multiple stars ; and we end with the star- 
clusters and the greater nebulae ; but whether we have 
more than barely begun the exploration of the material 
universe, is more than man can say. "Great and mar- 
velous are thy works, Lord God Almighty ! Who shall 
not fear before thee, and magnify thy name ?" 

One of the things which the Bible impresses upon us, 
in regard to our Creator, is his immensity : what else can 
be thought of him when we see, as we now do, how he 
has planted these island universes, one beyond another, 
and kindled these great sun-fires to send their wavelets 
surging through the luminiferous ether ? Another thing 
which the Bible affirms in very strong terms is the power 
of God ; and how wondrously is his power manifested, in 
calling this material framework of the heavens into ex- 
istence, and urging on its tremendous mechanism with 






The Star -systems. 211 

such exactitude from age to age ! If there be such a God 
as the Bible describes, and if he shall execute a work of 
creation, are not these the proportions on which we may 
expect it to be laid out, and is not this the kind of work- 
manship we might expect to find ? Do we not see in the 
celestial mechanics a kind of imperial fitness of things ? 
Do we not find here a breadth, a profusion, a boundless- 
ness, that leads well out toward the infinite ? And is not 
this whole work very much what one would expect from 
an omnipotent and everywhere - present God ? If the 
doctrine of a God be true, this material creation, these 
starry heavens, these towering systems of suns, and sun- 
clusters, and star-nebulae, and island universes, established 
on spaces so immense, are very much the thing to match 
the doctrine and to confirm our faith in it. And, if any 
man can look out upon what has been passing before us, 
as we have taken this look among the stars, and say, " All 
this came by chance," it will be sufficient to reply, " Then 
perhaps even a God might have come by chance also." 



212 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



THE FIFTH DAY. 



L^ACH step we take in this history lifts us into a higher 
*^^ range. We found the earth at first in a chaotic 
condition ; but gradually it has been assuming order. We 
found it dark ; but the light has come in. We found it 
without an open atmosphere ; but God divided the waters 
from the waters. We saw the continents slowly rising 
out of the sea. We saw vegetation springing up, and at 
last massing itself into beds of coal. And, last of all, 
we saw the open sky, in which sun, moon, and stars were 
beaming. One thing at a time is God's method ; but 
matters are advancing ; and by and by we shall see this 
planet made ready for the coming in of such a being as 
Man. 

To begin this fifth day, we go back again. The dry 
land has begun to appear, but it lies low and marshy. 
Vegetation has sprung up, but it is vegetation of an infe- 
rior order, consisting mainly if not entirely, as yet, of 
certain sorts of sea-weed. And though sun and stars 
have appeared, they shine upon a world in which there is 
not so much as a worm to crawl in the damp soil, or a 
jelly-fish to spawn in the tepid waters. Vegetable life 



The Fifth Day. 213 



has made a beginning; close upon that God brings the 
dawning of animal existence. "And God said, Let the 
waters bring forth abundantly, the moving creature that 
hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the 
open firmament of heaven." 

The thing first called for was the " moving creature." 
The Hebrew word is sheretz ; and Dr. Murphy says that 
means the " crawler," and that it " includes all creatures 
that have short legs, or no legs, and so are unable to raise 
themselves above the soil." He adds that "the aquatic 
and most amphibious animals come under this head." 
Principal Dawson, however, gives the term quite another 
meaning, and says that it refers not to their locomotion, 
but to their fecundity. It is not intended, as he supposes, 
to state by what means or in what manner these earliest 
forms of animal life moved about, but how rapidly they 
multiplied. Professor Tayler Lewis says that "the use 
of this term in other passages, and its connections here, 
force us to give it the sense of prolific breeding." And 
Professor Bush, who derives the term from the verb 
sharatz, " to bring forth, increase, or multiply abundantly," 
calls attention to the fact that it is the same used when 
the rapid increase of the children of Israel in Egypt is 
spoken of, and also where the plague of the frogs is 
described, which "the river brought forth abundantly."'* 
We shall not go far astray, therefore, if we say that what 
God called for at first, in the animal creation, was a " rap- 
idly multiplying creature." Very likely, also, these may 
have been " crawlers," according to the view of Dr. 
Murphy. 

* Ex. i. 7 ; viii. 3. 



214 The Story of Creation. 

The form of life next noticed was " fowl." This is our 
translation ; but the term used by Moses was " flying 
thing." The spawning creatures and the flying creatures : 
so runs the account ; both produced by the waters, both 
appearing on the same day, and the two curiously asso- 
ciated in the story. Were this story one of human con- 
struction, the creation of the flying thing would most 
likely have been left out of reckoning until the land 
animals had appeared ; for " flying thing " with us means 
only fowl or bird, and these would have been considered 
part of the work of the sixth day. But this account 
brings in the creation of the flying thing with the aquatic 
tribes and the amphibia. This may occasion great diffi- 
culty in our minds, but so it stands in the story. 

The twenty-first verse is in part a resume of the things 
already stated. Moses makes his statement a second 
time, for the sake of bringing in an additional particular 
or two. It was not alone the spawning creature and the 
flying thing which the waters generated ; but certain 
creatures of enormous growth. The spawners were gen- 
erally small ; but " God created great whales, and every 
living creature, which the waters brought forth abundantly 
after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind ; 
and God saw that it was good." The additional informa- 
tion given in this verse relates chiefly to the great whales ; 
but we are not to suppose that these creatures were whales 
in the strict sense of that term. The word is tanninim, 
and might be rendered " the long creature." Our trans- 
lators, wishing for a definite term, however, and regarding 
the whale as the creature of greatest bulk in the seas, 
thought that whales must have been intended, and ren- 



The Fifth Day. 215 



dered the term accordingly. Dr. Murphy says that the 
term is one "embracing vast fishes, serpents, dragons, 
crocodiles." Professor Bush says that the phrase "great 
reptiles " would give the meaning. We shall not go far 
astray, therefore, if we say that besides those early spawn- 
ing creatures noticed in the twentieth verse, the writer 
intends to make mention of a reptilian creation, particu- 
larly of certain creatures in such a genus, that bulked on 
his vision in enormous size. " It will also be observed that 
in mentioning these creatures he speaks of the flying 
creatures a second time, as if to say that it was with this 
reptilian nature particularly that bird-life, or at least 
winged-life, was to be associated. 

We must next notice particularly the element in which 
this new creation first manifested itself. This was " the 
waters ; " and the waters of this early stage in the history 
of our planet were chiefly the waters of the sea.* There 
was no such uplifting of the land yet as to create large 
rivers, nor were there yet any lakes of any great size. 
The continents were slowly forming. Long lagoons, wide 
marshes, and warm shallows prevailed. In such a state 
of things the conditions of a low order of animal life were 
easy ; and here, accordingly, it first appeared. This is 
the story, as given by Moses. Animal life is first of a 
low order, such as spawns abundantly and is of marine 
origin. Succeeding this, life-forms appear of larger bulk, 
still either marjne or amphibious, and along with this, 
also in great abundance, the winged life culminating in 
the birds. 

It also concerns us deeply here to notice the exact 

* See Genesis i. 10. 



216 The Story of Creation. 

terms in which the production of animal life is stated. 
We have two such terms. It was " created," and it was 
" brought forth." The introduction of the word bara, to 
create, in this place, can scarcely fail to attract attention ; 
for it has not been once used in this account since the 
original announcement that " God created the heavens 
and the earth." Animal life, so far as we can judge, no 
more requires a distinctively creative act than vegetable 
life ; and yet, when vegetable life appears, the word bara 
is not uttered. One thing, however, we notice, viz., that 
the creating and the bringing forth are the same thing ; 
so that, in the estimation of the sacred writer, it would 
by no means be denying the doctrine of creation to affirm 
that a thing appeared as a development. " There was an 
exact moment," says Professor Lewis, "when animal life 
began — a life which before was not in our earth, and 
which, but for the Divine Word, saying, Let it be, most 
assuredly never would have been. The earth, or nature 
in her largest sense, through any power previously be- 
longing to them, never would have originated or developed 
or brought it into existence. But still it does say, most 
distinctly, the earth brought them forth or gave them 
birth. The prolific water was the natural bed in which, 
through the vivifying agency of the Ruah Elohim, or 
Divine Spirit, originated the first 'moving things.' ' 

The life principle was a creation, and yet those early 
spawners were true children of the sea. The waters 
" spawned them," as the creatures spawned their success- 
ors : God having so charged those mighty seas with this 
new force of animal vitality, that everywhere, the con- 
ditions being favorable, the spawners began to appear. 



The Fifth Day. 217 



After them came the great tanninim, and the birds. Life 
was there, and it took on a great variety of forms. It 
began low ; but it rose into superior orders, and God saw 
that it was good. 



28 



218 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

THE RESPONSE OF NATURE : THE DAWNING. 

"\~\7E have seen what the Bible says in regard to the 
* origin of animal life : what has Science to respond 
to those statements ? Is its voice in conflict with that of 
inspiration, or are the two the same ? Strictly speaking, 
we might say that Science has no voice to utter here ; for, 
in the present state of learning certainly, no science can 
tell us how life first came in upon our globe. We can 
indeed trace the history of life backward, toward a begin- 
ning, and can reach a point which shows us the earliest 
form of life yet known. But whether something earlier 
may not have existed, the record of which has been en- 
tirely obliterated, or something the record of which is yet 
to appear, we do not know. If we are to have any exact 
and perfect knowledge on this subject, it must come to 
us from some other quarter. Science cannot tell us either 
how or when life began in our world. 

Nevertheless, it can tell us something more or less 
bearing upon this great question, which we may find it 
interesting to know. For example, it can tell us, and 
does so affirm, that animal life appeared first on our globe 
in the marine form. It was not the kind of life that exists 



Response of Nature: the Dawning. 219 

on dry land, but that which is found in the waters, and 
especially in the waters of the sea. 

The earliest records of such life that we have in nature 
are found in the lower stratified rocks. Certain organic 
remains are found in such rocks, representing to some 
extent the animal life that existed when those rocks were 
being formed. The rocks themselves consist largely of 
sediment, deposited at the bottom of some sea ; and in 
such sea certain animals lived, which sank into the sedi- 
ment at the bottom, and thus their forms were preserved. 
The sediment in process of time became rock. At a 
later stage the rock was uplifted, and formed dry land. 
And now we break the rock and find the fossil remains. 
Professor Dana* lays it down as one of the general prin- 
ciples bearing on the facts of what is called Paleozoic 
history, that "the earlier species were aquatic, and all of 
them marine. Protozoans, radiates, mollusks and water- 
articulates comprise all the known species of animals." 
This is high authority ; and the statement exactly agrees 
with the account as given by Moses. 

How did Moses know this ? None of the schools of 
his age had learned it. There was not a man on earth in 
his day that would have known what a fossil was, had 
one been shown him. No one knew how the rocks were 
formed or which was oldest. Nearly everything known 
concerning fossil remains has been learned within the last 
half-century; and even now, much more than half the 
world is entirely ignorant on this subject. Yet, somehow, 
that marvelous man Moses was able to make the state- 
ment that the earliest animal life in our planet was in and 

* " Manual of Geology," page 382. 



220 The Story of Creation. 

of the sea. There is but one way to account for this. 
He was a man who was taught of God. 

Another doctrine of modern science that corresponds 
to the teaching of this book here is, that all the earlier 
forms of marine life were of an exceedingly low order. 
" It was life without a voice, without a footstep, without a 
wing," says Professor Winchell. And Professor Dana * 
says, " The earliest representatives of animal life on the 
earth had no special organs, either of sense ; of motion, 
excepting minute hairs or hairlike processes ; or of nutri- 
tion, beyond at best a mouth and a stomach." It was life 
in its simplest or most elemental condition. One spe- 
cies of these earlier creatures he describes as of even 
simpler structure still, "having generally no mouth or 
stomach," but "extemporizing each, when a particle of 
food touches it," by depressing its soft surface at the point 
of contact, and closing over the particle till digestion has 
been performed. Principal Dawson thinks he has discov- 
ered the remains of one of these very early species in the 
Laurentian rocks. He calls it Eozoon ; but it is of so 
utterly simple a structure that the question is in dispute 
among scientific men whether it should be reckoned with 
organic existence at all. 

This quite agrees with the representations given by 
Moses. Those sea-spawners of his were unquestionably 
a low order of creature. Birds, reptiles, land animals, 
these all came later. At first it was the " moving crea- 
ture " simply ; or the " crawler," as Dr. Murphy would 
have it, or the "rapidly multiplying creature," or the 
" spawner," as the word literally signifies. As a rule, the 

* " Manual of Geology," page 161. 



Response of Nature: the Dawning. 221 

lower orders of animal creation are amazingly fruitful. 
The mammalia, and especially such as approach anywhere 
near the human range, bring forth a single offspring once 
a year, or once in two years, or once in five years, it may 
be ; but a fish spawns its thousands in a single season ; 
and Poli has computed that a single oyster contains, in 
some cases, 1,200,000 eggs, all of which are spawned in 
one season. When, therefore, Moses marked those early 
creatures by their fecundity, he not only stated a fact, 
but he declared in effect a general principle — they be- 
longed to the lower orders of the animal creation. 

So Science comes round again to the record and re- 
sponds, Amen. Nearly four thousand years ago Moses 
stated that the early types of animal life on our globe 
were all marine ; and geology says, " It is so." Again, 
he says that all these types were very fruitful ; and geology 
says, " I can show you whole systems of rock built up by 
their almost microscopic remains." Again, he says in 
effect that this early life was all of it of a low order — 
spawners, crawlers, sprawlers ; and geology, by its noblest 
prophets, once more replies, " It was life without members, 
life without voice, or footstep, or wing." 



222 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

THE REPTILES AND THE BIRDS. 

r I ^HE living creatures came in successive dynasties. 
In the earlier empire, the ignoble family of the 
mollusks for a long time bore sway. At a later date came 
in a dynasty, cold-blooded, but at least possessing back- 
bone. It was the fish family ; and some of its members 
were great and powerful beings in their day. But clear 
above them towered a succeeding dynasty, reaching its 
greatest height in what is known as Mesozoic time, and 
marking it as the Reptilian Age. This age was introduced 
by the race of batrachians, of which our best and almost 
only remaining modern representative is the frog. These 
creatures come into life first as tadpoles, living only in the 
water, and breathing by means of gills, like a fish ; but as 
they attain to maturity they become air-breathers, capable, 
however, of remaining a long time under water, where their 
skin does the work which their gills once performed. We 
call them amphibious, as living in either element indiffer- 
ently. They are a kind of compromise between the fish 
and the true reptile, the latter being an air-breather ex- 
clusively, though not needing like the higher creatures 
what we should call very pure air. These batrachians 
were of immense size in some cases. One of them, walk- 



The Reptiles and the Birds. 



223 



ing on two feet, says Professor Dana, was " tall enough to 
look over a twelve-foot wall." 

Of the true reptiles, the lizard species was very promi- 
nent. . It is known by geologists as a saurian, and appears 




HADROSAUR. 
(From Winchell's " Sketches of Creation." New York : Harper & Bros.) 



in numerous varieties. One of these was the enaliosaur, 
or swimming reptile, fifteen to forty feet long ; and another 
was the mosasaur, or snake-like reptile, ten to seventy feet 
long. One of these creatures, of the dinosaur, or " terrible 



224 The Story of Creation. 

lizard " family, was called the hadrosaur, and, says Profes- 
sor Dana, was "full twenty-eight feet in length." Profes- 
sor Winchell says, " The hadrosaur attained the length of 
thirty feet. It could stand erect, and used its fore feet to 
grasp the foliage of the trees, which served it for food." 
This must have been a "terrible lizard" indeed to look 
at, though as it fed on plants only it was not so dangerous 
as the laelaps, which was a carnivorous creature, and could 
also stand erect, measuring twenty-four feet.* Such were 
the forms of animal life which at one period in the history 
of creation prevailed on both the eastern and the western 
continents. It was the reptilian age ; and the chief crea- 
tures that populated the world were of this character. 
They were "great whales," as our translators would say; 
or more properly, as Moses would say, they were tanninim, 
or long creatures. 

If Moses took in this creative work by visions and 
glimpses, what could there be, more certain to arrest his 
attention, as the great procession passed by, than those 
gigantic reptiles ? He had no name for them. Such terms 
as hadrosaur and mosasaur did not occur in the Hebrew 
language ; but there was a verb which signified " to draw 
out" or "to be very long," and from this verb Moses 
made a noun, "tannin," and said, I will use that as a name. 
These creatures standing thirty feet high, these others 
swimming forty feet long, and these snakes measuring 
seventy feet and furnished with curious paddles, I will 
call the tanninim ! 

He did not call them whales. That was the mistake of 
the translators. They supposed that such long-drawn 

*Dana, "Manual of Geology," page 464. 



The Reptiles and the Birds. 225 

creatures, seen about the waters, must be whales, of course ; 
for they knew of nothing else extant that would match 
the term, and of fossils they had no knowledge at all. So, 
even with Moses* words to guide them, they blundered in 
the use of terms, while Moses himself, with nothing to 
guide him, unless we suppose that he was divinely di- 
rected, avoided their error, and chose the very word that 
was wanted. 

One other thing deserves special notice here ; and that 
is the association of these reptiles with the family of the 
birds. Moses puts them together: does science allow 
this, or is it inadmissible ? To this it is to be answered, 
first, that the reptilian age is recognized as the age of 
birds by all good geologists. The period is that known as 
the Mesozoic, extending somewhat, however, into tertiary 
time; and Principal Dawson* remarks that "reptiles and 
birds appear abundantly in the Mesozoic age." " Remark- 
able harmony of form characterized the higher terrestrial 
life " of this age, says Professor Dana. There were " di- 
nosaurs that could raise themselves erect and march off 
like birds ; birds measuring height with the amphibians, 
and outreaching them by their longer necks."f One of 
the great reptiles of that age, the megalosaur, twenty-five 
or thirty feet long, presented a " curious analogy, if not 
some degree of affinity, with the ostrich." Reptiles ap- 
peared, having bones that were light and hollow, like those 
of birds ; and birds appeared, having pointed teeth in 
both jaws, like reptiles. One reptile, the pterodactyl, had 
wings, and could fly like a bird, while its head was also of 

* " Bible and Nature," page 122. 

- t " Manual of Geology," page 430. 

AS) 



226 The Story of Creation. 

bird-like form. This was a marvelous creature, and some- 
times of enormous size. If Moses saw it in vision, it is 
not strange that he set down the words "flying thing." 
Specimens have been found which must have measured 
twenty-five feet from the tip of the one wing to the tip of 
the other. And there was a reptile known as the archaeop- 
teryx, with bat-like wings, which produced a row of quills 
on each side of its long tail ! Indeed, so completely does 
this creature unite the bird-nature with that of the reptile 
that naturalists are undecided upon which side of the di- 
viding line to place it. Generally it is spoken of as an 
ornithoid reptile ; but Professor Dana classifies it as a 
herpetoid bird. Thus it appears that there is a curious 
connection between the reptile class and the bird class. 
They both populate the earth in the Mesozoic age, and 
their two natures blend in the most remarkable manner. 

" Great whales and fowl that fly," reads our translation : 
the long-drawn creature and the flying creature, says 
Moses. He brings them into the same day's work, and 
sets them side by side ; apparently confounding things the 
most diverse. Nothing could seem further apart than the 
reptilian nature and the bird nature ; and yet he persists 
in associating them together. A perplexing matter this, till 
geology comes in with its marvelous revelations, when lo, 
all is plain. We gather up the fossils of the Mesozoic age, 
and there we find reptiles with bones, legs, wings, bills, 
quills, like birds ; and birds with teeth in both jaws, like 
reptiles. They are enormous creatures, too, and such as 
to attract attention as the vision sweeps by. Moses sees 
them, and makes the record. For four thousand years it 
stands unconfirmed. It is the puzzle of interpreters, and 



The Reptiles and the Birds. 227 

the stumbling-block of infidels. When lo, the rocks render 
up their secrets, and the whole story is told. Moses, by 
inspiration, declared, four thousand years ago, what science 
has been able to discover only in these later times. His 
declaration was not understood, indeed, till we found the 
key to it all in the study of geology ; but now it admits 
of no question. His account of the reptiles and the birds 
is like those prophecies which are in themselves obscure, 
but which wondrously harmonize with the event when it 
occurs. History is a sure interpreter of prophecy ; and 
geology, rightly read, is, as to certain parts of creative 
history, an equally sure interpreter of the Mosaic record. 



228 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XL. 

THE SIXTH DAY: ITS MORNING. 

r I ^HE sea has been set at work producing animal life: 
now let the land begin. " Let the earth bring forth 
the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping thing 
and beast of the earth after his kind ; and it was so." 
This is the inscription that stands across the gateway by 
which we move another stage downward among these 
creative days. Let us decipher the mystic sentences if 
we can, and penetrate the hidden wisdom which they 
cover. 

This is the sixth day. We must not suppose, however, 
that the fifth day was completed before this began. 
This day gives us the creation of the land animals ; but 
they did not wait to appear till all those great sea-forms 
and amphibia had had their time out. The new race of 
creatures commenced its existence, indeed, later than the 
previous race ; and in like manner it reached its culmina- 
tion later ; but the two creations overlapped each other, 
and went on for a long time side by side. This is the 
method of this entire cosmogony, and by this interpreta- 
tion alone is it that all is made plain. 

On this sixth day " living creatures " were called for. 
They were brought forth by the earth instead of the sea, 



The Sixth Day : its Morning. 229 

and so we reckon them land animals. This phrase, living 
creature, is nephesh hayah in the Hebrew, and it may be 
well for us to acquaint ourselves with the term ; for we 
are likely to meet it again. In the second chapter of 
Genesis, at the seventh verse, this nephesh hayah means 
the immaterial part of man. God breathed into his nos- 
trils the breath of life, and he became a nephesh hayah, 
living soul. So the term signifies a living soul ; and as 
Moses calls these beasts living souls, we are at liberty to 
suppose that he intends to assign to them a nature not 
material, as well as to man. He makes this distinction, 
however, between the two : the one kind of soul is earth- 
born, and the. other is imparted by the inbreathing of the 
Almighty. The brute soul has one origin ; the human 
soul another. And as their origin is not the same, so 
may we infer that they are different both in nature and in 
destiny. 

Some of these living creatures are called cattle. The 
term applies to herbivorous animals, and particularly to 
such as have been domesticated. " Let the earth bring 
forth the domestic animal," is the creative order ; and the 
record is that such animals were brought forth. They 
had not, indeed, been yet domesticated ; but they should 
be when man should appear. They were domestic ani- 
mals in general appearance, and were called such by an- 
ticipation. If, as has been suggested, Moses drew these 
pictures from what he saw in a kind of vision, we may 
suppose that he beheld on the earth, as this sixth day 
was unfolded, those animals which were afterward domes- 
ticated ; or creatures so nearly resembling them, that he 
gave them the same general name. He saw these creatures 



230 The Story of Creation. 



browsing the green pasture-ground, and he set down the 
word cattle. 

He also mentions " beast of the earth after his kind." 
This probably means the wild beasts ; especially the car- 
nivorous animals. He does not describe these beasts 
particularly, or catalogue their names ; there was no need 
of that, and, moreover, some of them might have been 
creatures he had never seen before, and for which he had 
no name. He observed their general character, however, 
as the strange vision swept by, and set them down " beasts 
of the earth." 

One thing more he specifies — creeping thing. This 
term, like a great many others in this account, is descrip- 
tive rather than specific. So the writer designated the 
rapidly multiplying thing ; so he named the flying thing ; 
and so he took notice of the long-drawn thing. The 
Hebrew language contained no word to designate these 
creatures, and so Moses described them. It is the same 
with respect to these creeping things. He saw creatures 
which went low on the ground, perhaps creatures prowl- 
ing* and crouching while seeking their prey, and he 
wrote down the term, " creeping thing." 

The suggestion that there were " prowlers" in those 
days will startle some good people, because the opinion 
has been very extensively entertained that until man 
sinned and fell all animals were harmless, and that none 
of them preyed upon each other. But while the Bible 
teaches, indeed, that "death" entered the world by "sin," 
we judge that the death and the sin alike, in that case, 
are human. As for the harmlessness of the carnivora 

* Dana, " Manual of Geology," page 768. 



The Sixth Day: its Morning. 231 

before the fall, we are probably indebted for that doctrine 
to Milton's " Paradise Lost : " 

" About them frisking, played 
All beasts of the earth, since wild, and of all chase 
In wood or wilderness, forest or den. 
Sporting the lion ramped; and in his paw 
Dandled the kid. Bears, tigers, ounces, pards, 
Gamboled before them." 

So sang John Milton ; but in the matters we are now 
discussing we are more concerned with the writings of 
another man. Moses is our present authority ; and if we 
have rightly rendered his words he certainly indicates 
that not only before man sinned, but before he was created, 
there were carnivorous animals in the world. 

As we move out into this sixth day we see once more 
that creation is advancing. That is, we are steadily com- 
ing up from a lower range of things to a higher ; from 
a world without form to a world that is set in order ; from 
a dark world to a world where there is light ; from a world 
where the waters cover everything to a world whose con- 
tinents are forming ; from a world without an open atmos- 
phere to a world encompassed with pure air ; from a world 
in which there is no life to a world on which the grass 
begins to spring ; and from a world in which life was only 
vegetable in its character to a world where, rank above 
rank, the animal creation appears. The earliest animal 
life, as we have seen, was of the sea ; and it is a principle 
among naturalists that this "involves inferiority of spe- 
cies." Next came the amphibia, connecting sea and land, 
and then came the creatures that tenant the dry land 
only. The lower grades appear, the life they represent 



232 The Story of Creation. 

reaches its maximum, and then there is generally a dwin- 
dling away ; but before the lower grade is gone, a grade 
higher begins. Its first dawnings are seen usually about 
the time the lower grade reaches its best state ; and, once 
started, it immediately begins to work toward better 
forms, still gaining upon the type of life below, until it 
marks the age in which it stands. 

In the sixth day we are among the mammalian tribes. 
These cattle, creeping things, and beasts of the earth be- 
long to that order. They are not only creatures that live 
on the land, and so the highest order of living thing to 
which we have yet come, but they are of that class in 
which we reckon the highest of all, the last formed crea- 
ture, man. 



The Earth - product : its Period. , 233 



CHAPTER XLI. 

THE EARTH -PRODUCT: ITS PERIOD. 

HT^HIS sixth day's work occurs on dry land. That of 
the previous day was entirely marine. For that, 
the fiat went forth, "Let the waters germinate." For 
this it is, " Let the earth bring forth." And as there was 
a sea-product in the former case, so is there an earth- 
product in this. This is the second time the earth has 
been called upon to produce life, besides the special call 
that was made upon the sea. The first life-call was for 
vegetation : " Let the earth bring forth grass." In that 
case the word " earth," as in verse first, probably includes 
the whole globe without distinction of land and water; 
for vegetation appeared in response to that call both on 
the land and in the sea, the sea-forms coming first. But 
when animal life is called for there are two distinct fiats 
of the creative Will. The sea is first set at work ; and 
then, by a second call, the same kind of life comes forth 
on dry land. 

In what manner the earth responded to this call we do 
not know. A somewhat common notion is that by this 
call God created all sorts of animals under the soil, and 
that when it is said that the earth brought them forth, the 

meaning is that they worked their way up into the light 
30 



234 The Story of Creation. 

and the air. This again is the conception of John Milton ; 
and it shows what a power his great epic has been in the 
world, that so many have accepted its poetic fancies for 
Scripture truth. 

" The earth obey'd ; and straight 
Op'ning her fertile womb, teem'd at a birth 
Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms, 
Limb'd and full grown. Out of the ground up rose, 
As from his laire, the wild beast, where he wonns 

In forest wild, in thicket, brake, or den 

The grassy clods now calv'd ; now half appear'd 

The tawny lion, pawing to get free 

His hinder parts, then springs, as broke from bonds, 

And, rampant, shakes his brinded mane ; the ounce, 

The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole, 

Rising, the crumbled earth above them threw 

In hillocks. The swift stag from under ground 

Bore up his branching head ; scarce from his mould 

Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheav'd 

His vastness." 

So John Milton, but not Moses. With Moses, the earth 
is causative ; with Milton, not. It is rather a hindering 
cause, and, we should judge, in one or two cases a hin- 
drance of a pretty serious sort. Behemoth "scarce" gets 
out at all, and if the tawny lion had not pawed pretty 
vigorously, his "hinder parts" might have stuck fast to 
this day ! And, if this was the way of it, what was the use 
of creating these things under-ground at all ? But, if we 
suppose the earth, at God's call, actually to have germina- 
ted some low form of living creature, and so to have started 
animal life, the conception agrees with the record. In such 
a case, the earth would make a response to the call ; but, 
in the case conceived by the author of " Paradise Lost," the 
earth only hinders, and helps not at all. Even as a poetic 



The Earth - product : its Period. 235 

figure, this conception of Milton is sufficiently gross, but 
to be adopted as a sober reality, it is much less Scriptural 
than Darwinism itself. If the earth " brought forth living 
creature," in the usual sense of those terms, there was a 
germination in the case ; and if a germination, then why 
not, by God's will, all from a "few germs " ? This notion 
of all creatures " limbed " and full-grown at first, and the 
attempt to accommodate it to the Scriptures by assuming 
that these creatures were created under ground, and burst 
up through the sod, is neither Bible nor philosophy. 

Great account, however, is made by some interpreters 
of the phrase used here, "after his kind." God made "the 
beast of the earth, after his kind ; and cattle, after their 
kind ; and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the 
earth, after his kind." Yes, so reads the record ; but does 
that mean that he created these things independently of 
second causes ? Does that mean that he in no way sum- 
moned existing nature into the service ? If so, why then 
does he issue the fiat which requires all this of the earth ? 
He created these things in some way, we know not how, 
by means of the earth. 

True, he created them of various kinds ; but that neither 
proves that he created all sorts at one and the same instant, 
nor yet that he created any sort full-grown. For aught 
that is here affirmed, he may have created one kind from 
another, even as he did the first kinds from the earth. It 
is a false interpretation which insists that this passage 
teaches that each species in the animal kingdom is an 
original creation, and it is an interpretation which may 
yet prove very unfortunate for the friends of the Bible. 
Moses teaches no such thing. His whole account is gen- 



22,6 The Story of Creation. 

eral. He says that God made these land animals in three 
"kinds": one "kind," cattle; another kind, "creeping 
thing;" and another kind, "beasts of the earth." Our 
scientific conceptions, expressed by the terms genera and 
species, were entirely foreign to his thought. God called 
to the earth, and the earth answered back in three general 
kinds. This is all that Moses affirms ; and as long as we 
keep to this, we are at liberty to indulge any scientific 
hypothesis which the facts in the case may seem to require. 
If Mr. Darwin will admit as much as this, viz., that what 
nature produces comes by God's call, and that such call 
was not merely given at the beginning, but has been 
repeated at some rare intervals since, we can harmonize 
him with Moses most beautifully, and name his theory as 
he does, "the plan of creation."* 

Professor Tayler Lewis says, " A development theory 
which has no divine origination, or acknowledges the 
going forth in time of no Divine Word, is indeed athe- 
ism But a development theory, in the sense of 

species from species, as well as individual from individual, 
may be as pious as any other. It may have as many Di- 
vine interpositions as any other. It may be regarded as 
a method of God's working, and that, too, as rationally 
and as reverently as the more limited system, to which we 
give the name of nature in its ordinary or more limited 
sense. Modern theologians have been too much frightened 
by certain assumptions and speculations on this field." 
Then referring to the doctrine of spontaneous generation, 
which goes even beyond Darwinism, he says, " It may 
well be doubted whether Mr. Cross ever produced insects 

* "Origin of Species," page 427. 



The Earth - product : its Period. 237 

under the circumstances which he claims to have given 
birth to his famous acari, but there is no rational difficulty, 
and no impiety, in the supposition that the Divine Word, 
which first originated and gave law to animal life, may 
have connected its development with certain chemical 
conditions, which science may discover, as well as with the 
presence of a seed in certain states of air and heat." * 

A combination of natural causes and divine interposi- 
tions — this is the Mosaic conception of creation. It is 
not nature working on irrespective of God ; and no more 
is it God working on irrespective of nature. He originates 
the system, and in so doing sets in operation certain forces. 
These produce important results ; but this is not all. 
Rarely indeed, but still clearly, at special epochs God 
" speaks ; " and obedient nature answers by a nobler prod- 
uct than has appeared before. In the whole long history 
of the introduction of animal life upon our planet, and in 
the bringing forth of all its forms, as related by Moses, 
he " spake " but three times. Mr. Darwin might admit as 
much as that, one would say, and still claim for his devel- 
opment hypothesis a very wide range. 

As to the period of this sixth day, we can only indicate 
it in general terms. No account is kept of years and 
centuries yet ; but the aeons succeed each other in an 
orderly arrangement. Chaos, light, an atmosphere, the 
continents, vegetation, sun and moon, marine life, life on 
the dry land — so they stand. We count by these stages, 
not by years ; for though the great time-keepers have been 
set going, brutes do not mark time, and man has not yet 
appeared. All we get from Moses is the order of succes- 

*"Six Days of Creation," page 215. 



238 The Story of Creation. 

sion ; and following this order we have found ourselves in 
the midst of land-life, which also proves to be mammalian 
life, next after the reptilian epoch, and next before the 
coming in of man. If this arrangement of the record is 
false, science will show it ; for science can give us the 
general order of this creative work. But, if this arrange- 
ment is correct, as science distinctly declares it to be, 
then have we once more come upon an evidence of the 
divine inspiration of this writer of a most conclusive sort. 
This is the more observable, because the writer separates 
this sixth day into two parts. It is like the third day in 
that respect : two creations occur. The day is all mam- 
malian indeed ; for man belongs to that order in creation. 
Therefore, there is a kind of unity in it, making it one 
day instead of two. But the mammalian epoch, and the 
human, as Moses gives the account, are separated the one 
from the other. Man, though a mammal, comes in later, 
and is a being of another grade. Something occurs 
between his epoch and that of the mammal's, sharply 
separating the one from the other. We shall presently 
see what it was which made this separation : and after- 
wards, perhaps, why man is set alone in this great work ; 
but for the present, we have sufficiently indicated the 
period of this sixth day. 



Neozoic Time. 239 



CHAPTER XLII. 



NEOZOIC TIME. 



pHE creative progress of our globe with reference to 
life may be divided into four periods. 1. Archaean 
time, embracing the ages represented by those rocks 
which bear no life-signs, and those which bear the earliest 
life-signs ; 2. Palaeozoic time, covering the period repre- 
sented by the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous rocks ; 

3. Mesozoic time, which was the Reptilian age ; and 

4. Neozoic time, or the New Life period, covering what is 
known in geology as the Tertiary age, and the Quaternary. 
These divisions essentially are recognized by all geologists, 
though sometimes designated by different names. We 
may put them in tabular form. 

I. Archaean time, viz. : 

1. The Azoic age, and 

2. The Eozoic age. 
II. Paleozoic time, viz. : 

1. The age of invertebrates; or, the Silurian age. 

2. The age of fishes ; or, the Devonian age. 

3. The age of the coal-plants : or, the Carboniferous age. 

III. Mesozoic time ; or, the Reptilian age. 

IV. Neozoic time, embracing ■ — 

1. The Tertiary age ; or, age of mammals. 

2. The Quaternary age ; or, the human period. 



240 The Story of Creation. 

It will thus be seen that the sixth creative day stands 
in Neozoic time, and that its two divisions correspond 
very accurately with the two ages of that period as repre- 
sented above. The former of these two divisions, viz., 
the Tertiary, is represented in the sacred narrative by the 
twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth verses of the first chapter 
of Genesis. These are the verses upon which we have 
been commenting in the last two chapters. This Tertiary 
period is the time indicated in God's call for and the 
earth's production of " cattle, creeping thing, and beast 
of the earth." 

But we must here note a subdivision of this period. It 
has a three-fold unfolding. Its earliest part is known as 
Eocene time ; its middle part is called the Miocene ; and 
its subsequent part is called the Pliocene. The Eocene, 
the Miocene, and the Pliocene — these make up the Ter- 
tiary ; and the last part of the Pliocene is sometimes 
called the Post-pliocene. This threefold period is it which 
Moses has before him, if all our previous discussions have 
not been at fault, when he speaks of the creation of those 
animals of the mammalian order, which he calls " cattle, 
creeping thing, and beast of the earth." Well, this cor- 
responds exactly with the revelations of geology ; for 
while the dawn of this mammalian epoch is to be recog- 
nized far back in the Reptilian age, the dawning was but 
faint there, and this Tertiary age witnessed its noonday. 
There were a few creatures of the mammalian kind in the 
Reptilian age, but they were those of a low order ; while 
the Tertiary age is acknowledged as richer in mammalian 
life than any period before of afterward. Dr. Dawson * 

* " Earth and Man," page 255. 



Neozoic Time. 241 



says, " We regard the mammalian fauna of modern India 
as one of the noblest in the world; but it is paltry in 
comparison with that of the much more limited Miocene 
India, even if we suppose, contrary to all probability, that 
we know most of the animals of the latter. But if we 
consider the likelihood that we do not yet know a tenth 
of the Miocene animals, the contrast becomes vastly 
greater." If Moses had a vision of that creative epoch, 
how could he better distinguish it than as he has done, 
by describing it as an age of mammalian life ? 

There were some conditions favorable to such life at 
that time. One was, the almost even climate that pre- 
vailed everywhere. For as yet, those sharp divisions be- 
tween the frigid, the temperate, and the torrid zones which 
are now recognized did not prevail. Life did not sort itself 
off as it is now obliged to do, according to latitudes, but 
distributed itself everywhere ; so that remains of both 
animals and vegetables belonging to this age are found in 
arctic regions, which now could nourish only in the 
warmer zones. The earth-crust was not then so greatly 
cooled as now, and so did not so much depend upon the 
sun for heat. Moreover, it is not impossible, as has been 
shown by Professor Waring, in his " Miracle of To-day," 
that the present inclination of the earth's axis was much 
less then than now. At any rate, it is admitted that our 
planet, during most of the Tertiary age, was exempt from 
its present extremes of arctic weather. 

We find in that age representatives of each of those 

three classes of creatures spoken of in the passage now 

before us. We do not find, indeed, that exact species of 

each kind which exists on the earth at the present day. 

31 * 



242 The Story of Creation. 

The species of the Tertiary age are nearly or quite extinct ; 
but we have much the same genera then as in these times. 
Thus we have the progenitors of our present domestic 
animals, or "cattle." The hog appears in the London 
clay of the Eocene period, and in the Miocene we have 
the camel, which to Moses was a very familiar domestic 
animal ; also the sheep and the ox, and not less than three 
species of the horse.* None of these were of exactly the 
same species we now have ; and the horse was particularly 
noticeable, one species of that day being no larger than a 
fox; but there were true horses, sheep, oxen, hogs, and 
camels ; and though Moses had never seen any exactly of 
that sort, he recognized them, and very properly set down 
the term domestic animals, " cattle." 

Of wild beasts there were plenty. The city of Paris is 
built upon an Eocene formation; and the researches of 
Baron Cuvier in those beds brought to light most wonder- 
ful remains there. The sea in which these rocks were 
deposited seems to have become shallow after a while, 
and lakes or ponds and marshes of saltish water remained, 
like our American " salt-licks," which were resorted to by 
animals from all the surrounding country. These crea- 
tures were often mired in the muddy shores, and so lost 
their lives and left their bones there. Whole " herds of 
heavy, short-legged, and three-hoofed monsters (palaeothe- 
rium) with large heads and long snouts, probably scantily 
covered with sleek hair, and closely resembling the modern 
tapirs of South America, laboriously waded through the 
mud, and grunted with indolent delight as they rolled 
themselves in the cool saline slime." f The stag was also 

* Dawson, " Earth and Man, page 255. t Dawson. 



Neozoic Time. 



243 



a tertiary animal, and so was the antelope, and the hip- 
popotamus, and the rhinoceros, and the elephant, espe- 
cially a great hog-like species of elephant known as the 
mastodon ; and if there had been a Nimrod in that day 
he might have called our world the hunter's paradise. 

There was one of the wild animals peculiar to that age 
which deserves special notice. It has been named the 
dinotherium, and is described as a strange mixture of the 
elephant, the rhinoceros, the tapir, and the marine mana- 




THE DINOTHERIUM. 



tus or dugong.* The remains of this creature were found 
in the Miocene of Epplesheim, in Germany, and are de- 
scribed by Professor Kaup. Its " skull is three feet four 
inches in length ; and when provided with its soft parts, 
including a snout or trunk in front, it must have been at 
least five or six feet long. Such a head, if it belonged to 
a quadruped of ordinary proportions, must represent an 

* Dana. 



244 The Story of Creation. 

animal as large in proportion to our elephant as an ele- 
phant to an ox."* Its most marked peculiarity was its 
tusks, which, proceeding downward at right angles from 
its lower jaw, constituted a kind of two-pronged pickax, 
with which it grubbed for roots, or tore up trees that it 
might feed upon the branches. If Moses had a vision of 
the animal creation of that day, this monstrous dinothe- 
rium must have attracted his attention ; and if he saw it, 
floating its huge bulk upon the steaming waters, or tear- 
ing through the forests and throwing up the soil, it is not 
any wonder that he marked one thing at least as a " beast 
of the earth." 

There were carnivorous creatures also in great abun- 
dance, and among these was one which stands prominent 
as a creeping thing, or prowler. It is found, as stated by 
Dr. Dawson, in the European Miocene, and is named the 
machairodus. It belongs with the cat family, but has all 
the terrible features of that race exaggerated. Its fangs, for 
example, were like a pair of sabres extending downward 
from its upper jaw; and it could spring upon the biggest 
pachyderm of that age, a rhinoceros, an elephant, or even 
a dinotherium, and strike in those monstrous teeth, and 
hold its grip, and suck the creature's blood, until it brought 
him down. If Moses saw the carnivora of that day, in 
vision, this terrible tiger-cat must have arrested his atten- 
tion. And if he marked its characteristic movements, it 
is not strange that he wrote, " a prowler ! " 

So there is no great difficulty in identifying this first 
work of the sixth day with the Tertiary period of Neozoic 
time. After the great whales and the birds, says Moses, 

Dawson. 



Neozoic Time. 245 



came the cattle, the beast, and the creeping thing. And 
science answers, "After the reptile age came the mam- 
malian age." The record in the Book has been open for 
three thousand years, but has not been well understood. 
It is being illustrated in our day by a series of stone 
pictures ; and the new-found pictures strangely match the 
old printed story. Lithograph and letter-press — let us 
study them together. 



246 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

A PAUSE IN CREATION I THE ICE-AGE. 

r I ^HE work of the sixth day was two-fold : it embraced 
the creation of the mammalia and the creation of 
man. The first part of this work is recorded in the 
twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth verses of the first chapter 
of Genesis ; the latter begins with the twenty-sixth verse, 
and is much enlarged upon. The former winds up with 
the usual formula for a finished day's work, "And God 
saw that it was good ; " the latter opens very much as if 
a new day's work were being inaugurated. The two parts 
of this one creative day thus stand separate. There is a 
sharply-defined division line between them. This division 
naturally indicates a pause in creation, and more than 
hints that just there the process was arrested, after which 
it began again. 

Are we able, then, to find anything in creative history, 
as read from the rocks, which locates such a pause and 
confirms its reality ? Does geology indicate any such 
period separating the mammalian epoch from the human, 
in which the progress of creation was arrested, and when 
no new species of either animal or vegetable life appeared ? 
The answer to this question is close at hand. It was just 
at this point that the great ice-age came in ; and that age 



The Ice -Age. 247 



not only arrested for the time being all creative energy, 
but threatened to reduce our planet to its original chaos. 
To understand this peculiar epoch, we need to notice a 
little what is known as glacial action. 

A glacier is a river of solid ice, from two hundred to 
five thousand feet deep, having its rise in some moun- 
tain region, among the heights where there is perpetual 
snow, and slowly making its way downward to the lower 
levels. Where a region lies above the line of perpetual 
freezing, and where also there is a moist atmosphere, the 
snow continually accumulates and must somehow be dis- 
posed of. A part of it, more than is usually supposed, 
disappears by evaporation ; but the most of it must some- 
how be sent down from the mountain-tops to be melted 
in the region below. Some of this is blown down in wild 
flurries, the terrible winds of those upper regions whirl- 
ing it to vast distances, where it melts and falls in mists 
and rain. In other cases, especially if the mountain-side 
is steep, it breaks away in huge masses, and is launched 
with irresistible force from the declivity, and we have an 
avalanche. But at other times it is compacted together 
more closely, and moves more slowly, taking the course 
of some valley, and then we have a glacier. It has been 
proved by experiment that snow, under strong pressure, 
can be compacted into clear ice. And these enormous 
heaps of snow, crowding, perhaps, into some valley as 
they go down, sometimes form an ice-river which, strange 
as it may seem, flows steadily onward till it reaches the 
warmer regions, where it melts and passes away. A 
glacier also may form over a broad extent of country 
without reference to valleys, provided there be a sufficient 



248 



The Story of Creation. 



accumulation of snow at some height in that country to 
create the mass and induce the requisite pressure. 

The difficulty we have in comprehending such an ice- 
flow lies in the fact that in nearly all our experience with 
it, ice is very brittle and apparently unyielding. But ex- 
periments have shown that under a steady, strong, slow 




THE GORNER GLACIER. 
(From Dana's " Manual.") 

pressure, ice will bend. Dr. Kane gives an account of 
the bending of an ice-table supported at each edge, though 
the temperature was all the time below freezing. And so 
those ice-rivers which we call glaciers bend round the 
turns, receive tributaries, and, in short, act in a slow way 



The Ice -Age. 249 

very much as do rivers of water. In one particular, how- 
ever, the ice-river is peculiar : if the bend is too sharp it 
will open in cracks and fissures on the convex side ; and 
if it makes a cascade anywhere, instead of pouring down 
in a stream, it breaks in huge blocks, which at rare inter- 
vals fall into the abyss below. Some of the ice-rivers of 
Greenland make a fall in this way into the sea ; and the 
blocks that break off and drop into the water float away 
and are known as icebergs. 

The chief difference between a river and a glacier, how- 
ever, lies in the rate at which they move. Often a glacier 
moves at so slow a pace, that except for careful observa- 
tion we should not know that it moved at all. Hugi, the 
Swiss naturalist, built a hut on one of these ice-streams, 
and, returning to it three years afterward, found that it 
had moved 330 feet. Six years later it had advanced 
2,354 feet; and five years later still, Professor Louis 
Agassiz made an observation there and found that it had 
been carried, since it was first built, 4,884 feet ; making 
an average of about 349 feet a year.* 

Slowly as these ice-rivers flow, however, they carry an 
energy which nothing can resist. Any human structure 
that should stand in their way would be crushed like an 
egg-shell ; for they not only dig up the soil and tea? away 
the largest trees, but break off immense rocks, which they 
sometimes round into bowlders, and sometimes crush and 
grind into gravel and sand. Along the shores of these 
rivers, especially toward their lower termini, are heaped 
up long lines of this material, which are called lateral 
moraines ; and at the terminus of each of these rivers is 

* Braun. 
32 



250 The Story of Creation. 

another heap of this material, known as the terminal 
moraine. Each glacier, of course, ends in a stream of 
water, caused by the constant melting of its lower end. 
But this melting begins at some distance up the stream, 
and the water sinks into the open cracks in the ice, and 
usually tunnels out the glacier for some distance on the 
under side. The end of a glacier, therefore, is likely to 
open as a kind of ice-cavern, from which a stream of 
water issues. 

Glaciers, during the great ice-age, were no uncommon 
things. But that age did not come on all at once. It set 
in gradually. The warm climate and rich vegetation of 
the Miocene period extended into the Pliocene. But as 
the Pliocene age went on, there came a chill upon the 
globe. In what is known as the post-Pliocene age the 
chill grew to a winter, wrapping at intervals the whole 
northern hemisphere. And it is now the general opinion 
of geologists that our continents at that age, even in the 
temperate latitudes, were covered with a thick sheet of 
ice like that which now covers Greenland. It was not a 
winter of a few months. The evidence goes to show that 
its duration was immense. Lyell, who supposes that 
there were two ice-ages, with a milder interval between 
them, estimates the time that covers both as not less than 
224,000 years. Professor Braun would make it much less, 
but apparently would give to the first ice-age a period of 
about 10,000 years.* It was a marvelous interruption of 
the creative work, in either case ; and if Moses had a 
glimpse of this wintry desolation, it is no wonder that he 
paused in his story, and waited for a more hopeful vision 
before he began again. 

*" Glacial Epoch," page 71. 



The Ice -Age. 251 

There are several natural causes suggested for this 
period of extreme cold. One is, that the earth's orbit 
around the sun is more elliptical at certain periods than 
at others, and as this would throw the earth in certain 
parts of its orbit farther from the sun, it is thought that 
this might have produced the extreme cold. And astro- 
nomical calculations have been made on this basis, indi- 
cating how long ago the ice-age may have been, and when 
another like it may return. The more common explana- 
tion suggested is the upheaval of the lands of the northern 
hemisphere, and particularly those toward the north pole. 
High lands are cold lands ; and any considerable elevation 
of the continents near the north pole would undoubtedly 
bring in an ice-age for the northern hemisphere. 

But, whatever may have been the natural agency in- 
ducing this change, the evidence of its reality is very 
strong. One evidence is found in the existence of im- 
mense loose, rounded rocks, known as " bowlders," which 
have been not only ground into their present shape by 
some tremendous agency, but transported to great dis- 
tances from the bed from which they were broken off. 
Another evidence is found in the beds of sand and gravel, 
and small bowlders known as " cobble-stones," that are 
distributed over such great areas of our northern conti- 
nents. Glaciers now at work are constantly creating such 
material and distributing it. We call this material "drift," 
and in some cases it shows moraine formations, both 
lateral and terminal. Another indication of glacial action 
is found in " striated" rocks. That is, the bed-rock under 
the drift, in certain places, shows long, straight grooves 
and scratches, just such as a glacier makes in passing 



252 The Story of Creation. 

over a rocky surface. The ice catches a flint-stone, per- 
haps, in its lower surface, and pushes it on, cutting a 
groove as it goes. So geologists are pretty well agreed 
that there was an ice-age following the Tertiary period, 
though some attach less importance to the glacial action 
than do others. 

We have spoken of this age as one in which the cre- 
ative process was arrested. So far as the appearance of 
new life-forms is concerned this is true ; but if we include 
in the term " creation " whatever prepared this planet for 
the advent of man, then was creation never more vigor- 
ously pushed forward than during the great ice-age. The 
thick, wide glacier was God's instrument. The Niagara 
River was not running by the best channel, and so the 
glacier filled it from the whirlpool down, and made the 
river cut for itself a new course. The soil of our globe 
was too thin for the best purposes, and the rock lay too 
near the surface ; so the glacier did the work of a subsoil- 
plow and tore up the rock to a greater depth, and ground 
the fragments into drift. It made great clay-beds beneath 
the drift and through it, to hold the water that fell from 
the clouds. And while along the coasts in different direc- 
tions it cut out indentations to facilitate commerce, it also 
dug for us those little lake basins, such as gem our central 
regions in the State of New York. A rough agency was 
it ; but the planet needed the plowshare, and the ice-age 
was the plowing-time. 

Perhaps it did one thing more. It is astronomically 
certain that when our moon was thrown off into separate 
existence our forming planet had an inclination of only 
about five degrees to the ecliptic. Now it has twenty- 



The Ice -Age. 253 

three degrees ; and this gives us our beautiful changes of 
season. Somewhere and somehow after the moon's for- 
mation, therefore, our world was tipped eighteen degrees. 
This may have occurred, as Professor Waring has shown, 
during the ice-age. The north pole, heavily loaded with 
ice-accumulations, would be tipped toward the sun. If 
the ice-age did that work for us, it was worth all it cost. 
In any case God's hand was in it, working all things 
" after the counsel of his own will." 



254 



The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XLIV. 



A SPRING BLOSSOM. 



' I ^HE darkest night is followed by morning. The long- 
est winter opens into spring at last. And the call 
that brings in a milder climate after the long glacial winter 
and clothes the earth with life again, is "Let us make 
man." This call opens for us the second epoch of the 
sixth creative day. It dates next after the ice-age, and 
brings us to the final product of the entire creative work. 
We are not to suppose that during the cold period all 
life was extinguished upon our planet. Some of those 
races previously existing indeed became extinct, but in 
other cases there was simply an emigration, whether of 
plants or animals, toward the tropics. The extreme cold 
urged all living creatures that had locomotion in the di- 
rection of the warmer latitudes ; and the glacier itself, 
moving southward, not to speak of the winds and ocean 
currents setting in the same direction, carried the seeds 
and plants of the arctic regions to new places. Moreover, 
that glacial period of which we now speak was a phenom- 
enon of the northern hemisphere only, and whatever life 
there was south of the equator enjoyed as favorable con- 
ditions as before. 



A Spring Blossom. 255 

But the time came for this winter season to close ; and 
so the high lands of the north subsided to their former 
level ; and once more the ocean currents set in from the 
tropics toward the poles ; and the mists and storms cleared 
away ; and the sun shone out warm again, and so the ice 
began to melt. The melting of course caused the glacier 
to drop the enormous loads of earth and gravel which it 
had been carrying, and so there were extensive deposits of 
drift. But the rapid melting of an ice coat, in some places 
fully a mile in thickness, created great rivers also, and 
these distributed the drift across the levels and along the 
valleys. 

It was a time of spring-floods ; or, as a geologist would 
say, a diluvian period. We sometimes have a disastrous 
flood in spring time even by the melting of our ordinary 
winter snows. The earth is mantled perhaps to the depth 
of a few feet, when a week of sunshine or a tepid south 
wind sets in, and the snow rapidly dissolves, and so all the 
rivers overflow their banks, and there is a destructive in- 
undation. But an ice-mantle contains more than twice as 
much water as a snow-mantle of the same thickness, and 
the ice of the glacial period was enormously thick. So 
when it melted, there were rivers roaring down the valleys 
that were like raging seas. In cases not a few, however, 
the glacier had heaped up its largest moraine at the mouth 
of one of these valleys ; or, as it melted, it deposited there 
its largest masses of earth and stone. This for a time 
would dam up the current, and then the valley would be- 
come a lake. At last this barrier would break away, how- 
ever, and then the waters would be poured down through 
the country below, and there would be a tremendous ero- 



256 The Story of Creation. 

sion. This time of the melting of the glacier, therefore, 
would be not only a time of great rivers, but a time for 
depositing and distributing the drift, and for the forming 
of wide tracts of country as lake-bottoms. Our American 
geologists call this the Champlain period, a name given it 
by Professor C. H. Hitchcock, with reference to certain 
deposits near Lake Champlain. 

In some places, of course, this melting would occur 
earlier, and in some later. In the high latitudes, and up 
among the hills and mountains, the ice would linger, long 
after it had disappeared from the more temperate regions 
and the plains. Indeed, there are remains of that epoch 
that have come down to our own time. The ice-rivers of 
the Alps, and the ice-mantle of Greenland, mark those 
strongholds from which the old glacier that once covered 
all the lands from the north pole down nearly to latitude 
40 has not yet been forced to retire. A conquered race 
sometimes maintains itself for many years in some broken 
highland region. So this conquered glacial epoch still 
holds its ground, not only at the poles, but much farther 
southward, if it find there only a mountain fastness of 
sufficiently difficult approach. 

There was a great receding of the ice-masses, however, 
as the warm spring came in. And as they receded, and 
the drift was spread, and the alluvium formed, vegetation 
began to clothe the barren wastes, and the birds and beasts 
that had been driven southward returned to the former 
haunts of their kind. Among those clear cold streams 
also, which now flowed everywhere, there were sheltered 
nooks, perhaps within hand-reach of the ice itself, where 
majestic trees lifted their heads toward the sky, and where 



A Spring Blossom. 257 

amid the grass that carpeted the virgin soil flowering 
plants on every side swung their censers and cast their 
incense on the air. It was perhaps in such a nook that 
the one perfected blossom of all the earth appeared, which 
only needs transplanting to bloom eternally and to fill all 
heaven with its perfume — that wondrous spring-flower, 
man. 

Moses gives us an account of the creation of this new 
and wonderful being, and traces a single line of descent, 
down from the original stock, to the Hebrew nation ; but 
he does not attempt to give us a continuous history of the 
whole human family. There were branches of the general 
household that migrated, and that were lost sight of ; and 
of which the only account we can obtain must be gleaned 
from much the same sources from which we gain our 
knowledge of the early animal creation. Human history, 
as to its earlier records, stands connected with geology ; 
and we find human remains as we do the remains of ex- 
tinct species of animal life. Primitive man has left his 
marks upon our globe : flint arrow-heads, stone hatchets, 
ashes and coals from the fires he kindled, and his own 
bones covered in gravel-heads, or hermetically sealed under 
stalagmite in some cave. And judging by such relics man 
appeared in this world after the ice age, and about the 
time of the earlier Champlain. As the glacial epoch was 
closing, and the Champlain spring-time coming in, this 
new blossom opened, and this new plant ripened, the seed 
of which has since stocked all the continents and islands 
of the globe. 

One of the early records concerning this new being is 
that the Lord God brought unto him the beasts and the 
33 



258 



The Story of Creation. 



birds "to see what he would call them."* These were 
not precisely the animals of the Tertiary period, nor yet 
were they entirely the same as those existing in our time. 




Elephas Primogenius, and other extinct animals, supposed to have been 
contemporary with Palaeocosmic Man. — Tichorhine Rhinoceros, Ex- 
tinct Hippopotamus, Machairodus, and Long-fronted Ox. The animals 
reduced from a picture by Waterhouse Hawkins. 

The Tertiary creatures had either been destroyed, or else 
their natures had been so changed, during the ice age, that 

* Gen. ii. 19. 



A Spring Blossom. 259 

it almost seemed as if a new fauna had been created. 
New species of the former genera were to be found, how- 
ever ; and among these some of peculiar characteristics. 
The elephas primogenius, or hairy mammoth, was there ; 
and as the world opened again, vast herds of these crea- 
tures roamed over Europe, Northern Asia, and North 
America. The two-horned rhinoceros, known as the 
woolly rhinoceros, was also there ; and his thick outer 
coating gives color to the suggestion that certain tropical 
animals obtained arctic peculiarities during the glacial 
winter. And there were hippopotami, of a species not 
now in existence, and colossal wild oxen, and a species of 
giant elk, and cave bears, and many other creatures, bird 
and beast, of a sort not to be found in the modern era. If 
Adam saw all these great creatures, he saw some strange 
sights ; and there must have been some among them for 
which it would not be very easy to find a name. 

Placed lord of this marvelous creation, man was charged 
to increase and multiply and replenish the earth and sub- 
due it. First, he was to "replenish the earth ; " and this 
he did very rapidly. The early human stock was not only 
amazingly fertile, but, according to Moses, long-lived ; and 
from their original centre the swarming tribes went forth 
in every direction. It is more than probable that the race 
had found its way into Europe even before the deluge ; 
and when the great dispersion came, from the Plain of 
Shinar the migration extended eastward into China, and 
at length even across into North America, while westward 
the stream flowed on till it reached the Atlantic Ocean. 
It was the swarming time of our species — the fulfillment 
of the divine purpose, "increase and multiply and replen- 
ish the earth." 



260 



The Story of Creation. 



" Subduing " the earth came later. That involved the 
subjugation not only of the animal tribes to the service of 
man, but the subduing of the soil by tillage, and the mas- 
tery of all those natural forces which aid in the work of 
civilization. Replenish first ; subdue afterward. That 
was the order in which the work was to be done. 






Man and Beast. 261 



CHAPTER XLV. 

MAN AND BEAST. 

"TV /TAN has an animal nature : is he an animal and 
nothing more? What does the sacred record in- 
dicate on this subject, and what is the corresponding tes- 
timony of nature ? Moses puts this new creation among 
the animal tribes in one respect ; for they and he are 
brought into being on the same creative day. The same 
epoch, as he describes the case, which produced the mam- 
malia, produced this highest of the mammalian species, 
man. But the story indicates that in several particulars 
he is a being classed entirely by himself. 

Thus, as already noticed, his creation is made a separate 
work. It occurs on the sixth day, but the work of that 
day is divided. There is first the production of cattle, 
beast, and creeping thing ; and later, as quite a different 
thing, the creation of man. Some distinction, clearly, 
Moses intends to give him among the creatures made on 
the sixth day. 

Moreover, the creative formula changes here. For the 
light, God said, " Let there be light ; " for the grass, " Let 
the earth bring forth grass ; " and for the sea-spawners, 
" Let the waters bring forth abundantly." But now the 
word is, "Let us make man." The earth is not called 



262 The Story of Creation. 

upon to produce this new creature, nor the waters to gen- 
erate him, as was the case with the lower orders of life. 
There is first a counsel on the subject, as if more than 
one were concerned in what is now to be done, and a kind 
of agreement and assent together, saying, " Let us make 
man." The consulting and assenting parties here may 
have been the persons of the Trinity, or the whole matter 
may be above our comprehension ; but one thing is clear, 
man's creation is by this sentence set apart from that of 
all the creatures previously formed. 

Moreover, man stands last in the order of creation, and 
so is naturally reckoned highest. We have seen at how 
low a point animal life began, and how successive orders 
of higher grade appeared. This has been the creative 
law. Each new order of life is above the one before it. 
The fish is above the mollusk ; and the reptile is above 
the fish ; and the bird is above the reptile ; and the mam- 
mal is above the bird. If this law holds good for man, as 
a separate creation, then is man also above the mere 
mammal. One of the indications of superiority among 
the later animal tribes is the approach they make to an 
erect posture ; and man has reached that posture so per- 
fectly that it is impossible for any creature ever to go be- 
yond him. Another indication of superiority, as stated 
by Professor Dana, is " cephalization " or the power and 
perfection given the brain ; and in that respect none of 
the animal tribes make any approach to man. 

It is also observable how man's creation is enlarged 
upon. Moses is writing a very hurried history. He dis- 
patches his work in the briefest possible order. Two 
verses suffice him for the whole Tertiary period. But 



Man and Beast. 263 



when he comes to man, the rapid stream is checked in its 
flow, and the clear waters expand right and left, like a 
lake so pure that you may see every pebble at the bottom. 
Six verses in the first chapter, and seventeen in the second 
chapter, and considerable more in the fifth chapter, are 
devoted to the story of the advent upon our planet of this 
one creature, man. This indicates the importance the 
writer attached to this event. All the wonders of that 
Tertiary age, all the products of the reptilian era, and the 
era of the birds, all the long procession of animal life from 
the day it first dawned till the ice-age shut in upon our 
planet, goes for nothing in the comparison when he takes 
up the creation of this one small being, man. 

The particular account given of the creation of the 
woman is to the same effect. This separates man from 
the inferior creatures. No such account is given of the 
creation of the female of the lion, or of the horse, or of 
the ox. Among the mere animals, everything is massed 
together, and numbers, tribes, and sex are lost sight of. 
" Cattle, creeping thing, and beast of the earth," says the 
record ; and so the account is hurried through. But man 
is brought into distinct notice — a uni-sexual being first, 
a being afterward male and female. How to interpret 
that curious record of producing a new sex by vivisection 
we may not be able to say. But, be our interpretation 
literal or figurative, one thing is manifest, the act gives a 
distinction to the human race. There is for our species a 
double creation. The race appears in one sex first ; and 
then, by a further creative process, appears as male and 
female. 

Such are some of the indications that Moses intended 



264 The Story of Creation. 

to rank the new being, man, as an animal indeed, but as 
something more. He has the animal nature, but in him 
it is perfected. He is of the dust, but God breathes into 
his nostrils an immaterial principle which he calls the 
" breath of life." The creative day on which he appears is 
the one common to him and the creatures of his class ; but 
his part of the day is separated from theirs by an epoch 
in which the entire creative work is suspended, and his 
creation is entered upon as if a new day had dawned. A 
long, slow, creative process, extending over Archaean time, 
over Palaeozoic time, over Mesozoic time, and over Tertiary 
time, producing creatures verging closer and closer upon 
the human range ; then the long, silent pause of the 
glacial epoch, and then — "Let us make man!" Of the 
dust, but something more. This is that last formed crea- 
ture, man. 



The Divine in Man. 265 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

THE DIVINE IN MAN. 

TT will confirm the conclusions of the previous chapter 
to observe man's special relations to God. These are 
indicated very distinctly in the narrative as given by 
Moses. We have already observed in what direct relation 
God stands to man in the act of creation, and by how 
different a call he brings him upon the stage from that 
he makes to bring the animal tribes ; but there are other 
circumstances bearing in the same direction. The record 
is full of them. 

One is this : that man is appointed to stand in the 
place of God. " Let him have dominion," says the Word. 
It is part of the original consultation in regard to him : 
" Let us make man, and let them have dominion over the 
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over all 
cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping 
thing that creepeth upon the earth." This was the pro- 
posal, and when man was produced the same words were 
repeated to him, and he was installed lord of all. 

We accept our lordly position in this world with the 

feeling that it comes to us of natural right. The being 

at the head of creation, we say, should of course rule 

that creation. But man has no such right, except as it is 
34 



266 The Story of Creation. 



given him of God. It does not give a man the right to 
subjugate those of his own race, that God has endowed 
him with intelligence or power superior to theirs ; and no 
more does such superiority give him the right to subju- 
gate the inferior orders of creation. God alone is the 
natural ruler of all created things ; and if man has the 
right to rule, it is by appointment of God. 

His appointment to that position, therefore, is a thing 
to be well observed. The record of it is a remarkable 
one. To this being, last created, God says what he had 
said to nothing which he had previously made. " I give 
you authority," he says, " to subdue and dominate all the 
lower creatures. You may possess yourself of them. 
You may subjugate them to your service. As to them, I 
put you in my place. I create you my vicegerent. I 
take you out from among the cattle and creeping things 
and beasts of the earth, and appoint you in my stead to 
rule the world." 

Another special thing said of the human race was that 
they were to be created in the image of God. This also 
was a part of the original consultation, even as it was a 
feature of the work when it was done. " Let us create 
man in our image," says God; and then to emphasize the 
expression, after the Hebrew fashion, by repeating the 
thought in other words, he adds, " after our likeness." 
" In the image of God created he him. Male and female, 
created he them." So is this circumstance reiterated and 
dwelt upon ; and to show what importance is attached to 
it, the sacred record brings it out in many subsequent 
places. 

What is meant by the image of God in man may not 



The Divine in Man. 267 

be perfectly clear. Several suppositions may be made. 
One might be that it was a physical likeness ; for, though 
God is a spirit and has no form, he has been pleased to 
assume a form at times, in which to appear to our race ; 
and whenever he has done so it has been a human form. 
Man's form is thus the God-form. Besides, the Second 
Person of the Trinity, for the work of atonement, perma- 
nently put on this form. He was " the image of the in- 
visible God." * He presented us a form in which we 
might know God ; and as this was the same form in which 
God appeared so often in the Old Testament times, so 
was it also the form in which man was created. Man, 
therefore, even as to his physical structure, takes the God- 
form. 

But another supposition may be made. The likeness 
may be one of the spiritual nature. The constitution 
of the human soul is framed, in its small way, after the 
God-model. Perception in man, so far as it goes, is like 
perception in God. So is judgment ; so is the logical 
process ; so is conscience ; and so are the affections. In 
these respects man is a being like unto or in the likeness 
of God. 

Nor is this all. There is a spiritual element in man 
which rises to a higher range ; and in his best estate he 
is holy like God. This is that part of the divine image 
which was lost by sin, but which through grace may be 
restored again. The apostle speaks of a man's "being 
renewed in knowledge after the image of him that hath 
created him." f This is the work of the Holy Spirit 
upon the soul. The renewal is regeneration, and the 

* Col. i. 15. t Col. iii. 10. 



268 The Story of Creation. 

knowledge is that of which our Saviour speaks when he 
says, " And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, 
the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast 
sent." * 

Either one or all these things may be included in the 
image of God ; but whatever it may be, one thing remains. 
It is something with which man is endowed, as distinct 
from all other creatures. We might say this even by 
comparison with the angels, who are never spoken of as 
" made in the image of God ; " but much more, of course, 
by comparison with the lower orders of the animal crea- 
tion. The lion stands noble among the beasts, but it is 
never said that he was made in the image of God. The 
ape foreshadows the human form, but it is never said 
that he is made in the image of God. That distinction 
belongs to man, and it is a very high distinction. "In 
the image of God created he him ; male and female cre- 
ated he them." 

Finally, we notice one special and significant act of 
God, by which this last-formed nature, humanity, is made 
complete. "And the Lord God breathed into his nostrils 
the breath of life, and he became a living soul." f This 
cannot mean simply that God made man a breathing 
animal ; for that was done for all the creatures inhabiting 
the dry land. They, in that sense, have the breath of life, 
as well as he, and, indeed, are called living souls. This 
record in regard to man must be understood as indicating 
somethin g special in his nature, and as showing that he 
possesses an element of life which no other creature en- 
joys. God gives it to him. It is breathed into man from 

* John xvii. 3. t Gen. ii. 7. 



The Divine in Man. 269 

God, as an emanation from himself. In the same sense 
in which other creatures are generated by physical nature 
isjthis being generated by the divine nature. And although 
sin may cut him off from his special relation to God, 
there are given to him in the gospel exceeding great and 
precious promises,* to make him once more a partaker of 
the divine nature, and to establish him forever as God's 
dear son and child. 

It does not invalidate this statement at all to say that 
man was formed of the dust of the ground. As to his 
animal nature, this is true. On that side of his being he 
is earth-born even as the creatures below him. But this 
inbreathing of God imparts to him a spiritual nature, and 
links him as a new man to the Lord from heaven. 

Putting all these things together, then, it will be seen 
that Moses sets man quite apart from the mere animal 
creation. Though he is an animal, yet is he just as cer- 
tainly something more. Though his body is of the dust, 
even that is set in God-form ; while as to his spiritual 
nature, he is directly from and begotten of his Creator. 

* 2 Peter i. 4. 



270 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XLVII. 



FROM THE DUST. 



A ND the Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
ground. In what sense are we to understand these 
words ? Of course they refer to the human body, or more 
comprehensively to both that form and life which we have 
in common with the lower orders of creation. As to his 
spiritual nature, God breathed into man the breath of life : 
as to his animal nature, God formed it of the dust of the 
ground. 

May we reverently ask what is the process involved in 
the word " formed" here? Did the Creator take a quan- 
tity of dust, literally, and moisten it, and mould it into a 
human figure as an artist moulds his " clay-form " ? We 
shrink a little from the details of this suggestion ; but the 
words of the narrative admit of this view, and it is one 
which a large number of people have unconsciously 
adopted. We may hold such a view and still believe the 
Bible; but there are other views which we may just as 
safely adopt. 

Man may have been formed from the dust in quite an- 
other way. He may have been so formed, not immedi- 
ately but mediately. As those of our race, living to-day, 
are of the dust through previous generations, connecting 



From the Dust. 271 



them with a dust-formed ancestor, so that ancestor himself 
may be dust-formed through previous generations of a 
lowlier life, from which he may have been evolved. The 
Mosaic account is precisely as good for one of these the- 
ories as for the other. So far as the record shows, we 
have two things to believe, and no more: (1) Man was 
created by God ; and (2) as to his animal nature he is an 
earth product, like the creatures that came into the world 
before him. 

Professor Tayler Lewis * says on this subject, "We are 
not much concerned about the mode of production of his 
material or merely physical organization. In regard to 
this, there is nothing in the expressions ' he made ' or ' he 
created him ' or ' he made him from the earth ' which is at 
war with the idea of growth or development, during either 
a longer or a shorter period. Ages might have been em- 
ployed in bringing that material nature, through all the 
lower stages, up to the necessary degree of perfection for 
the higher use that was afterwards to be made of it." 

President Potter,f of Union College, says, " If we meet 
the Darwinian with humorous reference to supposed apish 
ancestry, his retort is ready that an ancestry of clods is 
not less objectionable, and that the choice lies between 
animate and inanimate dust." 

And Professor Winchell J says, " Is it less credible that 
man as a species should have been developed by secondary 
causes from an ape, than that by such means man as an 
individual should rise from a new-born babe or a primitive 

* " Six Days," page 248. 

t Letter to the " New York Tribune," Dec. 4, 1875. 

J " Evolution," page 115. 



272 The Story of Creation. 

ovum ? It is no more derogatory to man's dignity, to have 
been at some former period an ape, than to have been that 
red lump of mere flesh which we call a human infant." 

These are the words of .men who stand too well as 
Christian believers to be put down with a sneer ; and 
they are equally men who, as Christian scholars, have a 
right to speak on this question. And, while they refuse 
to be tied up to the system of Mr. Darwin, until it shall 
be more thoroughly established, they equally refuse to be 
tied up to an interpretation of Scripture from which we 
shall perhaps in a little time be but too ready to retire. 

There may be men who accept the development hypoth- 
esis for the sake of making an assault upon all Christian 
theism. And such men may attempt certain inferences 
from that hypothesis, which would conflict with Holy 
Scripture. They may insist that as man derives his nature 
from that of the brute, he remains but a brute, though one 
of special culture. They may deny that there has been 
any inbreathing of God into man's nature, or that he is in 
any superior sense a living soul. And so they may deny 
the doctrine of immortality, and of sin, and of redemption. 
They may even deny the existence of God. But the hy- 
pothesis warrants no such conclusions ; and should any 
exigency occur in which we must either give up our belief 
in the Mosaic history, or find in that history a place for 
the general views of creation held by Mr. Darwin, no 
Christian need be alarmed. As to this human creation, 
Moses himself says it is from the dust ; and if so, it may 
as well be a development as an immediate creation. 

If the Bible had said that God moulded a clay figure in 
human form, and then set it up, and breathed life into it, 



From the Dust. 273 



we should of course be obliged to accept the statement as 
somehow true. But, as it says no such thing, we are not 
wise to invent so clumsy a theory and then rest upon it 
all our faith in the Book. The form into which God 
breathed that final nature that made it human may have 
been, so far as the record shows, for ages preparing. It 
may have been slowly brought up through countless gen- 
erations of lowlier life. And the inbreathing may have 
come just as it reached the place where it had become a 
fit temple for an indwelling soul. We do not say that the 
Bible teaches this. We say it teaches neither the one thing 
nor the other. We only affirm that while the doctrine of 
the immediate, sudden, instantaneous creation of man is 
consistent with sacred Scripture, the doctrine of the nat- 
ural development of his animal nature from some lower 
order of being, dust-formed, is equally so. An omnific 
word may have started the original germ. Another word 
may have set it higher and sent it on an upward way. 
And when it reached that point where it could be com- 
bined with a soul, God may have breathed into it that im- 
mortal nature, in the possession of which it fell from its 
estate of innocence, and afterward was redeemed through 
the death and suffering of Jesus Christ our Lord. 



35 



274 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XLVIII. 

DARWINISM NOT YET PROVEN. 

TT will not be doubted that in these pages the develop- 
ment hypothesis has received at least fair treatment. 
An opponent is always entitled to an honorable warfare, 
whoever he may be, and no one can read the works of 
Charles Darwin without the conviction of his entire can- 
dor, as well as extensive research. But let it not be sup- 
posed that his hypothesis has yet been established. It 
presents grave difficulties, and they appear in far more 
formidable array when we turn to the works of God than 
when we merely read the sacred Word. The true method 
of assailing Darwinism is not to quote Moses against it. 
Moses was too cautious to commit himself on any such 
question. The field on which this controversy is to be 
conducted is the field of scientific research ; and on this 
field Mr. Darwin himself says some of the difficulties of 
the system are " so serious that to this day I can hardly 
reflect on them without being in some degree staggered." * 
If the development hypothesis were true, the line of 
life ought to be found ascending by insensible gradations 
from the lowest order of creation clear up to man. The 
earliest creation ought to merge in something next above 

*" Origin of Species," page 133. 



Darwinism not yet Proven. 275 

it, and that in something a grade higher, and the whole 
ascent ought to be an inclined plane without breaks or 
sudden uplifts. The human races are thus graded. They 
ascend imperceptibly from lowest to highest. The black 
race shades into the red, and the red into the yellow, and 
the yellow into the white ; and so complete are the grada- 
tions that it is only by fixing arbitrary limits that we 
divide the human family into races at all. This is shown 
in the great variety of race-classifications which writers 
on this subject have advocated. Rev. Herbert Morris, 
D. D., in his " Present Conflict," quotes a large number 
of authors on this subject. "Tirey," he says, "divides 
them into two races, Jacquinot into three, Kant into four, 
Blumenbach into five, Buffon into six, Hunter into seven, 
Agassiz into eight, Pickering into eleven, Bory St. Vincent 
into fifteen, Desmoulinez into sixteen, Morton into twenty- 
two, Crawford into sixty, and Burke into sixty-three." 
This shows how the various human races blend together, 
and how arbitrary must be any line by which they are 
distinguished. And to fully establish the development 
hypothesis, we ought to be able to snow that all life, from 
lowest to highest, blends in the same way. 

Now, this cannot be done. Mr. Darwin admits it. The 
grade goes up from lower to higher indeed, but there are 
gaps in it, and apparently sudden uplifts. Mr. Darwin, it 
is true, holds that this is owing to the imperfection of 
the geological record, and says that every year's discov- 
eries tend to fill up the gaps ; but he says that in the 
present state of our knowledge, " geology assuredly does 
not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain ; and 
this, perhaps, is the most obvious and most serious objec- 



276 The Story of Creation. 

tion which can be urged against the theory." * And in 
regard to the transition of organic beings from one struc- 
ture to another, he says, " Here, as on other occasions, I 
lie under a heavy disadvantage ; for, out of the many 
striking cases which I have collected, I can give only one 
or two instances of transitional habits and structures in 
allied species." f These are very candid concessions on 
Mr. Darwin's part ; and were all his opponents equally 
candid, the contending parties in this field might directly 
begin to understand each other. Nevertheless, such con- 
cessions do not tend to create confidence in his system ; 
for why should we accept a hypothesis in regard to which 
its own author confesses himself seriously " staggered," 
even to this da}* ? 

The gaps to be filled in order to make out a conclusion 
for the development hypothesis are yet enormous. The 
geological record is indeed imperfect, and something must 
be conceded for that ; and it is true, undoubtedly, as Mr. 
Darwin urges, that something is being done each year to 
fill up the open spaces in what should be an inclined 
plane ; but as yet the case has not been made out. Thus, 
the first vertebrates, which are the fishes, appear suddenly ; 
and not the slightest trace of any connection has been 
discovered between them and the mollusks and the articu- 
lates next preceding. And this is the more remarkable, 
because the Silurian rocks, in which such traces should 
be found if they exist at all, afford embryonic forms of 
other creatures in large numbers. The facts are much 
the same with respect to the introduction of the mam- 

* " Origin of Species," page 265. 
t " Origin of Species," page 13S. 



Darwinism not yet Proven. 277 

malian species. The early Tertiary world was full of 
mammalian life, but, with the exception of a feeble mar- 
supial or two, of a species that utterly perished, no mam- 
mal fossils have been found in the rocks of a previous 
time. And this abruptness of appearance characterizes 
the incoming of the mammal race, whether we read the 
rock record in tropical India, or temperate Europe, or our 
own country. " The abruptness of this transition," says 
Professor Dana, " is astounding." There is nothing to 
connect this kind of life with what goes immediately be- 
fore. The facts are such as strongly to suggest a sudden 
new creation. 

If we come down to the human period, the gap to be 
spanned is even wider. This will be more fully shown 
hereafter, especially by a comparison of the human brain 
with that of the creatures nearest man in structure ; but 
what has already been affirmed will suffice to indicate the 
difficulties with which the development hypothesis must 
contend. The objection is not that the Bible is against 
it. As to that, if it were so modified as to admit of here 
and there an interposition of God in the progress of the 
creative work, it might well enough stand. Its difficulties 
occur on its own chosen ground. It cannot be harmo- 
nized with the ascertained facts of geological history. 
At any rate, it cannot be as yet so harmonized. We may 
indeed concede the plausibility of many of its suggestions. 
We may believe, if we choose, that the day will come 
when what has been so boldly theorized will be as a whole 
confirmed ; but in the present state of human knowledge, 
and with such a record as is accessible, Mr. Darwin's 
theory must be regarded as a hypothesis, and nothing 
more. 



278 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XLIX. 

WANTED : LIVING WITNESSES. 

A S to individual life, there is such a thing as organic 
development. We see it in the egg, which gradu- 
ally and before our eyes changes to a bird. We see it in 
the twig, which gradually and before our eyes changes to 
a tree. But we never see a mollusk changing to a fish, or 
a reptile to a mammal, or an ape to a man. 

Yet some such process as this we must witness, if the 
development theory is to be sustained. Because, even 
were our inclined plane of life-forms fully made out, the 
question would still remain, whether after all the one 
of these forms grew into the other. We may succeed in 
filling up all the gaps in the system. We may find that 
what seems an abrupt termination in any case really is 
not such. But that will prove nothing till we see these 
changes actually occurring. There may be a row of houses 
in a street, carefully graded from lower to higher, but that 
will not warrant us in believing that the one grew out of 
the other. The first may be very small and poor, and the 
next a little better, and so on till we reach the last, which 
may be a palace ; but that will only indicate a unity of 
design in the building. And so there might be a perfect 



Wanted : Living Witnesses. 279 

life-series from the lowest to the highest ; and yet unless 
we somewhere saw the lower in actual process of changing 
into the higher, we could only say, "Thus the Creator 
chose to arrange his work." 

We ought particularly to be able to observe this process 
in creatures now extant. If the geological record is so 
imperfect, as Mr. Darwin contends, then the living record 
must the more be resorted to. And this record ought 
particularly to be clear, on the transition between the next 
lower order and man. The creature supposed to live next 
door to man is a species of ape ; and the theory under 
consideration presumes that it is a development of such 
an ape which produces man. But if so, we ought in all 
the history of our world somewhere to have found at least 
some one instance in which an ape was clearly in process 
of becoming a man. The better class of apes, during the 
thousands of years since apes came to our knowledge, 
ought to have at least shown some improvement in this 
direction, and to have become obviously more human in 
their structure, habits, and mind. But this has not been 
seen. There are pictures of apes and of men, on the 
walls of the Egyptian temples and tombs, that are at least 
3,000 years old ; but they are precisely the same as apes 
and men are now. So there are mummies of apes and of 
men in Egypt, that have been preserved for the same 
length of time, and the ape is as much like a man and the 
man as little like an ape as now. Three thousand years, 
perhaps four thousand, have passed, and there has been no 
perceptible change in the ape or the man. All that period 
has done nothing whatever to close up the great gap be- 
tween the two classes of being. And if three thousand 



280 



The Story of Creation. 



years has accomplished nothing, how many years will it 
take to bridge the whole chasm ? 

This chasm is very deep and wide. It is seen, in part, 
in the brain-structure of these two kinds of being. The 
largest gorilla brain yet measured, says Professor Huxley,* 
reaches a bulk of but thirty-five cubic inches. The small- 
est human brain is not less than forty-six cubic inches. 
The space of eleven inches constituting the interval be- 



EUROPEAN 




Outlines of the Skulls of an Adult Chimpanzee, of a Native Australian, 
and of an average European. 

tween these two kinds of brain may seem small ; but 
small as it is, it needs to be filled. We want a brain of 
thirty-six inches, another of thirty-seven, another of thirty- 
eight, and so on till we reach the forty-six. So the human 
brain gauges, from the forty-six inches up to one hundred 
and fourteen, which is the largest European brain ; and 
so the ape-brain gauges from the thirty-five inches indefi- 

* See the Duke of Argyle's " Primeval Man," page 57 



Wanted: Living Witnesses. 281 

nitely downward. But between the thirty-five and the 
forty-six is this open space, as yet utterly unfilled. More- 
over, below this space we find brute characteristics, and 
only such, while above it we find human characteristics 
so distinctly marked that they can not be mistaken. It 
may be but a separation of eleven inches of brain bulk ; 
but that may create a divergency that is heaven-wide. 

Our argument is the more conclusive, however, in pro- 
portion as we take into account the whole anatomical 
structure of these two kinds of being. Man stands erect, 
and has a frame built for that purpose. The ape goes on 
all fours, and is built for that. Observe the pelvis of each. 
In the ape it is small, for it has nothing to sustain ; in 
man it is large, the haunch-bones flaring out so as to form 
a broad, deep basin, sustaining the abdominal viscera. 
Moreover, to these strong bones are attached those great 
muscles which sustain the human body in its erect posi- 
tion. To set the ape walking on two feet, his whole anat- 
omy must be changed. Professor Huxley * says, " Every 
bone of a gorilla bears marks by which it may be distin- 
guished from the corresponding bone of a man ; and in 
the present creation, at any rate, there is no intermediate 
link bridging over the gulf between homo and troglo- 
dytes." Of course it is claimed that this " missing link " 
will yet be found ; but the probabilities of such a discov- 
ery are not great ; and until the discovery is made, we 
must render our verdict — not proven. 

Such are some of the facts, as pertaining to the devel- 
opment theory, which meet us on the field of nature. In 
general terms there is a progress of life from lower to 

*" Man's Place in Nature." 
36 



282 The Story of Creation. 

higher. To some extent there is development, especially 
individual development. Nay, there is race develop- 
ment, at times, — better forms growing out of inferior 
forms ; but there can be found no instance of one living 
species, properly so called, in process of changing to 
another species ; and the geological record shows us the 
general life-progress made at times by abrupt transitions. 
One of the most abrupt of these transitions, and one of 
the most unmanageable of the breaks in the general sys- 
tem, lies next below our own race. We can find nothing 
to fill the wide chasm between the ape and the man. The 
record of the rocks, as to certain stages of creative prog- 
ress, will admit of a development theory. Nothing can 
indeed be proved, but there are certainly significant hints 
of what might have been. As to other stages of that 
progress the interruptions are such as to indicate the 
interposition of a superior hand. Some of those inter- 
ruptions may indeed yet be smoothed over, but in the 
present state of our knowledge the indications are (i) de- 
velopment, and (2) the rare but certain interposition of 
an Almighty Hand. 

And how could anything better agree with the inspired 
record ? Moses allows us room for a certain doctrine of 
development, as we have already seen. He almost uses 
the very term. The waters bring forth the spawner, and 
the earth brings forth the mammalia, and there is a dust- 
agent even in the production of man. But that is not 
all. There is a God at work also, and he turns these 
natural forces upon the wheels he would move, as a man 
would turn a stream upon his mill. There is a call, a 
command, a word in the case, and obedient nature re- 



Wanted : Living Witnesses. 283 

sponds. That call is not perpetual. It sets in motion a 
train of causes, and they work on till God calls again. 
A few times only is the call repeated during the creative 
process, but these few are of great account. In answer 
to the first the cosmic matter appears. In answer to the 
next there is motion. Then there is another, and we 
have light. And so, at eight or ten separate places direct 
creative energy is emitted, while for the rest things move 
on by natural law. 

It is not a development without a God, but in some 
modified sense we can not deny that development is 
there. It is not a blind nature working on without an 
Author and without control, but it is nature after all ; 
and there is the same manifestation of economy in the 
use of miraculous forces in this creative process which 
we witness everywhere. God does not break in upon the 
order of nature upon slight occasion, and for small pur- 
pose ; but when it is necessary he breaks in. The breaks 
are the exception, and the on-going is the rule. 



284 The Storv of Creation. 



CHAPTER L. 



PRIMEVAL MAN. 



TT 7 HAT sort of being was this human creature when 
he first appeared on the earth ? Was he possessed 
of well-ripened intellectual faculties ? Had he extensive 
knowledge of nature ? And was he what a man is now 
who has enjoyed a generous culture, and has been reared 
in the midst of a Christian civilization ? Such a picture 
of primeval man would be quite too highly colored. 
Moses certainly tells us no such thing. 

What then ? Was he a being just emerging from the 
brute level ? Was he a savage, fighting his way up toward 
civilization ? And are we to look for the lowest type of 
man in that very early day ? Such a sketch would be as 
much too sombre as the other was too bright. Moses no 
more describes primitive man as a savage than he does as 
a being of civilized tastes and culture. 

First of all, man stands before us in those days a prim- 
itive being. He is not a savage, he is not a brute ; but 
he is as a little child. As to his dress, his style was 
primitive surely, for at first he went entirely unclad ; and 
when he made his first attempts at garments, his success 
was just what might be expected. Fig-leaves first, coats 
of skin afterward — surely these were rude attempts ; and 



Primeval Man. 285 



even these he did not make until he was driven out of 
"the garden." 

A few of his treasures are mentioned in this early his- 
tory : * " Gold, bdellium, and onyx stone," says our trans- 
lation, but which Principal Dawson f believes to have 
been "gold, wampum, and flint stone." As to flint stones, 
we know what use uncultured peoples have always made 
of them, while wampum and gold are among the orna- 
ments with which they deck their persons. Gold is the 
first metal the man learns to use, for that is found in a 
pure state. Brass and iron, the working of which implies 
some discovery in metallurgy, come later. So does the 
construction of the "pipe and organ," which phrase indi- 
cates those rude instruments on which our race first 
learned to make a musical sound. These things come in 
at the third generation, and in one specially ingenious 
branch of the human family. Generations were im- 
mensely long in those days, and other branches of the 
great family gained more slowly. Noah, at the end of 
about one thousand and six hundred years, builds an ark ; 
but as to its entire structure he has to be directed of God. 
The race had not yet reached the era of ship-carpentry. 

God treats this new being much as one would treat a 
little child. He brings to him the animals "to see what 
he will call them." The great test of obedience he sets 
before him is a prohibition as to eating some fruit which 
grows there. And he walks with him and talks with him 
like a father with his child. The man also acts like a 
child. He attempts to hide among the trees when he 
hears God coming. He makes a very childish excuse for 

* Gen. i. 2. t "Earth and Man," page 310. 



286 The Story of Creation. 

it when God calls to him. And, when detected in eating 
the fruit, he says, like a child, " She gave it to me " ! 
Adam was created innocent, no doubt, and with a nature 
that was pure and holy ; and, being so superior in moral 
qualities, he is often supposed to have been superior also 
in everything else. There is where we mistake. On the 
Bible showing, not only before his fall, but in the act of 
his fall, and after his fall, he was a very primitive being. 

Yet, you notice an immense interval between him and 
the brute. Before he is shown to us as a completed 
human being, that superior nature has been breathed 
into him which allies him to God. Even his form is in 
some sense divine, and he has endowments which forever 
separate him from the creatures below him. One of these 
is the gift of speech, which, though not at first, perhaps, 
implying the possession of a very extensive vocabulary, is 
such as fits him at least for some simple discourse with 
his companion and with God. Not a merely cultivated 
animal surely is this being. Brutes have never yet been 
known to acquire intelligent speech, not even in its most 
primitive form. 

Nor is this being a savage. The savage lives by the 
chase, but man's first employment is to dress the garden, 
and to keep it. Horticulture, or, in a wider sense, agri- 
culture, is the first occupation of the race ; and the first 
two sons of our general ancestor keep the flocks or till 
the soil. Some branches of the rapidly increasing family 
may soon become savages. Those who migrate farthest, 
and settle in the wilder districts, would be very likely to 
become such. But it is not as a savage that man begins 
his existence in this world. 






Primeval Man. 287 



Of the moral sense of this being, distinguishing right 
from wrong, and of his religious nature, distinct account 
is made in the record. He recognizes a God. He recog- 
nizes but one God, and he understands his accountability 
as God's creature. A child he may be, and an unculti- 
vated child at that ; but when he begins the world, he 
knows and fears God. 

In regard to the date of man's appearance on our 
planet, we have no exact record. Moses sets him before 
us, indeed, immediately after that great break in his story 
which follows the mammalian creation, but he gives no 
year or century. In many Bibles there is a marginal 
note at the head of the first chapter of Genesis, reading 
"4004 b. c. ; " but that is, of course, of no authority. 
There are also genealogies following, which at first seem to 
afford us a basis for close reckoning, but they are regarded 
as quite unreliable. As many as eighty different con- 
clusions have been reached by men who have studied 
those tables ; and the summing up of the whole matter 
is well expressed by Dr. Charles Hodge, when he says, 
"The Scriptures do not teach us how long men have 
dwelt on the earth."* 

The location assigned to primeval man, geographically, 
is more closely marked. We may not be able to make 
out the actual site of "the garden," but sufficient data 
are given us to indicate the region in which the race first 
appeared. It was somewhere upon the River Euphrates. 
Several other streams are mentioned in the story, which 
it is impossible at present to identify, and which, perhaps, 
do not now exist ; but the Euphrates is a stream we know. 

* Theology, ii. 41. 



288 The Story of Creation 

On the Euphrates, then, and thus in a region central 
to the eastern hemisphere, man, as a completed human 
being, with body and soul, first walked the earth. 

Some account is given of the country as it then was. 
It was a land of trees, and especially of fruit-bearing 
trees. It was a " garden" land, from which we may infer 
a fine alluvial soil ; and it was a country well stocked 
with the "beast of the field," which means the easily 
domesticated animals, and with the "fowl of the air." 
Brooks and streams, orchards and groves, an alluvial soil, 
and plenty of " game," as we might call it, if Adam had 
been a hunter, made up the Eden where the Lord God 
placed the man. 

There is a change in affairs then directly, and the 
man goes out to find a more sterile soil, judging by 
the "thorns" and "thistles," and to encounter a more 
severe climate, judging by the "coats of skin;" and ele- 
ments of savagery develop in the race, till a flood comes 
and takes them all away ; but the beginning was very 
favorable, and the place we know. In the region of the 
Euphrates, probably somewhere near the sources, and 
amid very happy surroundings, man begins the world. 



His Religion and his Civilization. 289 



CHAPTER LI. 

HIS RELIGION AND HIS CIVILIZATION 

FN addition to the inspired notices of primeval man, we 
have a record from which something can be learned of 
him in nature. It is not precisely a rock record, such as 
that by which we obtain our knowledge of the creatures 
which preceded him on the earth ; for in the rocks, popu- 
larly so called, man does not appear. But his remains 
are sometimes found in caves covered with stalagmite, or 
in a kind of shell-rock of late formation, or in certain 
gravel beds ; and from these remains and other like 
sources outside the inspired record, we can gather some 
information of his habits and his history. 

One thing observed in this way, and admitted on all 
hands, is the recent origin of man. There may be some 
dispute upon this point when we come to measure by 
years his continuance on this planet ; but such disagree- 
ments are very common on all geological questions. 
Geology may give us an idea of periods, but it can give 
us no exact measure of years and centuries. It can tell 
us in what order these periods have succeeded each other, 
but it can not tell us, within thousands of years, how long 
any period may have continued. It can say that certain 
things are " recent " in the grand succession of life, but 
37 



290 The Story of Creation. 

the word "recent" will in any such case be relative only, 
and can be defined by no exact dates. While therefore 
there is a wide divergence of views among geologists as 
to the number of centuries man has been upon the earth, 
there is but one view as to his " recent" origin. As 
Moses sets his creation last among living creatures, so 
geology, by universal consent, responds, " He was among 
the very last." 

From the same source we learn that primeval man was 
a religious being. Our race leave their footprints wher- 
ever they migrate ; and among the earliest of these foot- 
prints we find indications of a belief in a God and in a 
world to come. One of these is seen in the disposal that 
the early races seem to have made of their dead. We 
open one of those ancient graves and we find there some- 
thing that was buried with the dead man as his outfit for 
his journey beyond. There is a fragment of pottery, the 
wreck of a drinking cup, by which he was to slake his 
thirst. There is a heap of arrow-heads, the remnant of 
the weapons with which he was to pursue the chase or 
conquer his enemies ; and close by are the ashes and 
coals, left by the fire of the funeral feast, at which his 
surviving friends ate and drank to the rest of his soul. 
We have no remains of human life on earth earlier than 
such as these. We have remains of races, evidently 
savage, wild, " palaeolithic," but nothing in which are not 
seen these dim recognitions of man's spiritual nature, 
and his anticipations of a world to come. 

In various ways also, quite aside from the scriptural 
account, we have intimations of the kind of religion ac- 
cepted by this primitive being. It has been shown by 



His Religion and his Civilization. 



291 



Professor Tayler Lewis, in a masterly argument on the 
Primitive Greek Religion, that all the various systems of 
polytheism ran back toward a belief in one God.* He 
shows the likeness in this respect between the Dodonaean 
Oracle and that of Thebes, " both of which point us to a 
very early stage of religious belief and worship, when the 



THE o WORLD 

Primitive" settlements 

DESCENDANTS OF NOAH 




THE ORIGINAL CENTRE AND THE COURSE OF MIGRATION. 



monotheistic idea was still predominant, if not exclusive 
both in the Hamitic and Javanic races." 

Polytheism comes in later. It is not the religion of 
primitive man, but a descent from that earlier and purer 
faith. At the old centre, where our race originated, the 
old religion for a long time maintains itself ; but as 
migration begins, and one tribe after another separates 
from the original stock, men lose their knowledge of the 

* Presbyterian Quarterly -, July, 1872. 



292 The Story of Creation. 

true God. In the westward direction, to say nothing of 
the currents that set toward the east and the south, we 
trace two streams of human emigration from the old 
centre in Western Asia. One of these flows more rapidly 
than the other, because it makes its way by the Mediter- 
ranean, and for the same reason it keeps up its communi- 
cation with the old centre. The other of these streams 
flows northward, between the Black Sea and the Caspian, 
and makes its way into Europe from that direction. The 
current in this second stream is slow. Dense forests, 
rough mountains, almost impassable fens, obstruct its 
course ; and, when these obstacles are once surmounted, 
the gates are closed behind the advancing column, and 
all communication ceases with home. Southern Europe 
is thus colonized early, and the colonies from that direc- 
tion, reaching the Atlantic, move up along the coasts, and 
possess even Britain ; but in Middle and Northern Europe 
there comes in a later population, of whom the southern 
races have lost all knowledge, and who have become 
savage in the lowest degree. 

Such was the emigration. Across the southern portion 
of the European continent a race made its way early, 
which, by all we can learn, long held to a monotheistic 
faith. The same race, reaching the Atlantic, pushed its 
way northward, and left its Druidical monuments on the 
British Isles, representatives of a religion bearing too 
strong a resemblance to the Dodonaean and the Theban 
faith to be merely accidental. Meanwhile, the so-called 
Scythian tribes, coming in from the other direction, and 
more completely severed from the old home centre, 
sunk to that almost irrecoverable condition described 






His Religion and his Civilization. 293 

by Herodotus and Tacitus as characterizing some of the 
more northern hordes. Each of these streams of migra- 
tion makes its marks upon the country into which it flows ; 
and these marks all indicate that, however degraded man 
became, he always had a religion of some sort, and that 
his faith was simplest and purest as he kept up his com- 
munications with the old home centre, or stood nearest 
the primeval times. 

Much the same discovery is made if we inquire for the 
early civilization of our race. The oldest empires of 
which we have any knowledge are such as Babylon, 
Assyria, and Egypt, and these empires stand close around 
the old home-hive on the Euphrates. Modern civiliza- 
tion, of course, we are not to look for at that early date ; 
but the more we learn to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics 
or to read the "brick libraries" of Assyria, the more are 
we made certain that in that early day there was a civili- 
zation of a certain sort, lifting man as thoroughly out of a 
mere savage condition as does our civilization to-day. 
Babylon, and Nineveh, and Thebes, — what savage race 
ever built cities like these, and created monuments such 
as these can show ? 

These are the oldest empires of the world. They are 
" prehistoric." Among the relics of ancient peoples we 
have nothing earlier to show. So far as has yet been 
discovered, there was no "neolithic" or "palaeolithic" 
age before them. There they stand, in full glory, the 
gorgeous spring-blossoms of a civilization which, under 
Christian culture, should bear such marvelous fruitage in 
these later times. If you want to find a "stone-age," you 
must come over into Europe, tracking the lines of migra- 



294 The Story of Creation. 

tion westward ; or you must come in still another stage, 
and fall in with those remoter stragglers who roamed 
our own continent before it was found by the European. 
Around the old home-centre in Western Asia, if there be 
a stone-age, it has come in since Nineveh and Thebes 
and Babylon fell. 

The earlier civilization of Europe, like its earlier popu- 
lation, came in from the east, where the race was started. 
This was acknowledged even by those whose pride would 
naturally have committed them to an opposite opinion. 
To quote again from Professor Lewis : " With all their 
national vanity and boasting, the Greeks of the later his- 
torical ages always felt themselves to be a more modern 
people, a younger people, as compared with the Oriental 
and Egyptian nations. To them these were the ' old 
countries,' as the nations of Europe are to us. They 
were the old home-lands; and the Greeks had a similar 
feeling of interest, if not of pride, in holding to a connec- 
tion of their literature and mythology with those of these 
earlier peoples. This was carried even into their philos- 
ophy ; and hence the stories of Thales, Pythagoras, and 
even Plato, having traveled and learned in the East." 

A religion far better than the later polytheism of our 
race, a civilization that laughs at such terms as " palaeo- 
lithic" and " neolithic," was certainly to be found in the 
earlier ages, about the old home-centre of primeval man. 



The Early Race and the Earlier. 295 



CHAPTER LII. 

THE EARLY RACE AND THE EARLIER. 

'TPHE Bible tells us of an early race of human beings, 
and of a race still earlier. An early race was that 
which went out from the ark, and which spread itself 
abroad immediately after the deluge ; but the world had 
been populated long before that, by a race that began 
with a remoter ancestry ; and, according to the commonly 
received chronology, that race held possession of the earth 
for nearly two thousand years, being at last swept off by 
the flood. 

Moses gives us quite a history of those early people. 
He tells us what a happy people they were at first, and 
how their circumstances, after a time, sadly changed. 
He tells us what a peaceful and innocent beginning they 
made, and how at length they corrupted their ways. He 
represents them as compelled to leave the garden in 
which God had set them, and to till a soil that bore thorns 
and thistles. He tells of the new kind of clothing they 
began to wear, " coats of skins," as indicating a severer 
climate. And he tells us how violent, or perhaps as we 
should say, how " savage " they became. 

Not all, indeed : a portion of the race, though outcast 
from the garden, still maintained the fear of God ; but 



296 The Story of Creation. 

the larger portion became degenerate. One family, de- 
scended from a man who had committed murder, migrated 
eastward, founding a colony ; and this migration is called 
going " out from the presence of the Lord, " as if it implied 
the loss of religious privilege, and perhaps the neglect of 
worship. Others, we may infer, migrated in the opposite 
direction, and a race of nephilim rose, the word being 
translated (l giants," or strong men. At last, but one 
family of eight persons remained, who had not corrupted 
their ways ; and then a " flood came and took them all 
away." It took away all except that one family. With 
that exception the human race on this globe became ex- 
tinct ; and it was from this family, who contrived to 
weather the catastrophe, that the world was populated a 
second time. 

This is the record as given by Moses. He divides that 
dim early age of human history into two eras, separated 
by a great catastrophe. He shows us a human race that 
came upon the earth and held possession here for nearly 
two thousand years, and then became extinct, or nearly 
so. Then he shows us a second race, starting from a 
mere fragment of the former one, locating itself in the 
same region of Western Asia where the original stock 
was planted, and soon spreading itself abroad, to populate 
the globe a second time. 

Those early migrations into Europe, which we traced 
in a previous chapter, belong no doubt for the most part 
to the second of these two races, but perhaps not all. 
Archaeologists cover the entire primitive history of man 
with a single designation, and call it the stone-age, refer- 
ring to the stone implements chiefly used by primitive 



The Early Race and the Earlier. 297 

man ; but more recent observations have led to the divis- 
ion of that age into two eras, each of which bears some 
race-marks, peculiar to itself. Sir John Lubbock has 
suggested names for these two eras, and they have been 
quite generally adopted. He calls the earlier the palaeo- 
lithic, or old stone era ; and the later, the neolithic, or new 
stone era ; but Dr. Dawson has well remarked that the 
use of stone implements is no indication of extreme 
antiquity at all, and cites in proof the case of the American 
Indians, with whom such implements were common till 
quite modern times. Instead of the word palaeolithic, 
therefore, he uses the word palaeocosmic, and instead of 
the word neolithic, the word neocosmic — the old world 
age and the new world age. 

Meanwhile, a class of facts has been considered, on the 
basis of which a third ancient era* has. been suggested, 
occurring between the former two. These facts consist 
mainly in the existence of the remains of arctic animals 
in the warm regions of the globe, indicating that there 
was a time when those regions were subjected to arctic 
weather. Thus the bones of the reindeer are found in 
great abundance in certain parts of Southern France ; 
and, to show that men were there at the same time, the 
bones are often found split by human hands to get at the 
marrow. A cold age is thus indicated, and it comes be- 
tween the palaeocosmic era and the neocosmic. Some 
call it the reindeer era ; some regard it as a second glacial 
epoch ; others doubt. But one thing would seem almost 
unquestionable: the palasocosmic era either was followed 
by or ran into a period of unusual cold. It will, perhaps, 

* Dana " Manual," page 574. 
38 



298 The Story of Creation. 

be the simpler presentation of the subject to say that it 
ran into this cold period ; that is, as the palaeocosmic era 
advanced, the climate became more severe, till at length 
even such creatures as the reindeer were driven far south- 
ward. As to the catastrophe which closed that era, it is 
sufficient, perhaps, to add that nearly all geologists agree 
that there has been at least one general continental sub- 
sidence since the glacial period passed away.* 

Thus, then, do the facts of the case meet us, so far as 
science can determine anything in regard to the extremely 
early history of our race. Man appears close upon the 
heels of the retreating glacier. His remotest remains, now 
discoverable, represent two races — an earlier and an 
earliest. The time of the earliest race ran into a period 
of severe weather, reaching at last a point of extreme 
cold ; and finally, though science has not yet been able 
so to locate the catastrophe as to determine whether it 
came in between the old world age and the new world 
age or not, it does affirm that, at some epoch since the 
glacial period, the continents have experienced one very 
great subsidence, which must have placed large portions 
of the present dry land for a time deep under water. 

So far, then, it would seem that Moses has once more 
curiously traced the outline of modern scientific discovery. 
The coincidence between his story and that from the 
other record may indeed be in part accidental, or some 
may count it imaginary ; but it is at least noticeable, and, 
taken with those coincidences marked in former chapters 
of this work, it can scarcely be counted less than signifi- 
cant. An early race and an earlier race, says Moses ; a 

* Dawson, "Bible and Nature," page 153. 



The Early Race and the Earlier. 299 

palaeolithic race and a neolithic, says science. A race, 
the older of the two, clothing itself in skins, as against an 
oncoming period of cold, says Moses ; the palaeolithic era, 
merging in the reindeer era, says science. A great catas- 
trophe, says Moses, a flood, by which the most ancient 
race of man becomes extinct ; a continental subsidence, 
says science, somewhere this side the glacial era, I can- 
not tell where, which puts large portions of the present 
dry land under water. 

Among the relics of this earliest age are several skele- 
tons, or parts of skeletons, that have been disinterred 
from a cave known as the cave of Cro-Magnon, at Perizon, 
in the limestone region of Dordogne, in France.* There 
is evidence that this cave was used at one time as a 
human dwelling, and that afterward it was made a bury- 
ing-place. Three human skeletons, taken from this cave, 
are regarded as probably the very oldest human remains 
in existence.! Two of these are skeletons of men, and one 
is that of a woman. One of the men was evidently very 
old, while the other might have been in the prime of life. 
The woman is judged to have been about thirty or forty 
years old. The old man was about six feet high, and his 
bones are such as indicate the strongest and most athletic 
muscular development. He must have been a very Sam- 
son in strength, says Dr. Dawson. Moses would perhaps 
have classed him among his nephilim. The woman pre- 
sented similar characteristics, being a person of " immense 
size ; " and, even at this distance of time, her remains 
bear testimony to the violence of the age in which she 
lived. She died apparently from a blow received upon 

* Dana " Manual," page 575. t Dawson. 



300 



The Story of Creation. 



the right side of her forehead ; and, as the cut is clean, 
the blow must have been a swift one. Moreover, as it 
was in her forehead, she must have died with her face to 
the foe. She was perhaps killed while fighting at her 
husband's side in defense of their cave-dwelling ; and, 
judging by her stout bones, she could have fought like a 
veritable Amazon. She, too, might easily be reckoned 
one of the nephilim ; and the marks of violence she bears 
may well indicate such a state of things as existed, accord- 
ing to the Mosaic account, before the flood. 

It is also worthy of remark that in each of these palaeo- 
cosmic persons there is good brain capacity. We have 
noted the lower border of rational human brain-measure 
at sixty-eight cubic inches. The old Cro-Magnon man's 
brain-measure was seventv-five inches — not an inferior 
measurement at all. A fighting man, perhaps, was he — 
a savage, possibly, in his existing mode of life ; but evi- 
dently the off-shoot, not very remote, of a noble race. An 
antediluvian man this, perhaps, of a tribe of those " strong 
men" who had straggled over into Europe from Western 
Asia, and whose habits were marked by that age when 
"the earth was full of violence." Dana refers these 
remains to the reindeer era. Dawson says they are clearly 
palaeocosmic ; and, in the present state of our knowledge, 
palaeocosmic man and antediluvian man seem very much 
the same. 



Deterioration. 301 



CHAPTER LIII. 



DETERIORATION. 



'T^HE degradation of a species, from a higher form to 
a lower, is one of the constantly recurring phenom- 
ena of geological history. Hugh Miller indicates this 
as a general law, and says that in each order of life " the 
magnates walk first." This is, perhaps, overstating an 
important fact, for the general tendency in each species 
is, for a time at least, in an upward direction. Neverthe- 
less, the downward forces are often brought into play, 
and degradation and development work on, side by side, 
through long ages. 

Moses indicates that there has been a degradation of 
some sort in the human species. As respects moral 
virtue, at any rate, there has been a "fall;" and this 
moral degradation exhibits itself in many phenomena that 
are purely physical. There are, indeed, spiritual forces 
at work upon our race which sometimes arrest this 
process ; and where these have free play, men are ele- 
vated in some important particulars, even above the 
primitive condition of the human family. Christian civil- 
ization stands so far above the Adamic civilization as 
scarcely to admit of comparison ; but the deteriorating 
tendency is strong, and where for long ages there is little 



302 The Story of Creation. 

to counteract it, whole nations of men become degraded 
almost beyond recovery. 

One of the occasions of the free operation of this 
tendency in our race is emigration. Dr. Horace Bush- 
nell, some years ago, undertook to show that emigration 
tended to barbarism, and thus to sound a note of alarm 
to the American people, among whom to "go west" had 
become a kind of passion. He claimed that it could be 
shown that families moving out from the old centres and 
locating in unsettled regions showed a tendency to run 
down. They left behind them their religious privileges ; 
they left in the same way their educational and social 
advantages ; they became rude in dress and manners ; 
they did not and could not keep up the refinement and 
culture of their New England homes. And thus he held 
that, however good the stock from which they descended, 
a few generations of " moving west " would breed a semi- 
barbarous population. 

There is undoubtedly such a tendency, and it is very 
manifest in remote settlements and frontier populations. 
Emigration has indeed its advantages ; and ultimately, 
under Christian influences, it may greatly improve the 
stock which at first it seems to degrade ; but, separate 
from such influences, it always at first induces deteriora- 
tion in certain directions, and sometimes ends, as Dr. 
Bushnell suggests, in utter barbarism. 

This law, which we have had such ample opportunity 
to trace in America, is also illustrated in those broader 
race-movements which have marked human history. The 
early civilization of our world all appeared in the vicinity 
of the old home-centre. Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt 




Deterioration. 303 



were empires that either rose upon the exact place where 
the human family were first planted, or sprang up close 
by ; and those tribes that straggled away into remote 
regions, and became separated from the old stock, were 
found at length reduced to the condition of savages. The 
law was this : both civilization and religion were kept at 
their best estate near the old centre ; and the one was 
corrupted and the other lost as men migrated and sepa- 
rated themselves from the home of the race. 

Professor Guyot illustrates this law by a very broad 
generalization, in his " Earth and Man." He begins by 
observing how the lower orders of creation are improved 
as they come under the intense light and heat of the 
tropics. Thus, with respect to vegetable life, he calls 
attention to the fact that, in the arctic regions, the mosses 
and fern-like plants chiefly prevail, while in equatorial 
countries even the grasses are developed into canes that 
run up thirty feet high. Then he shows the same law in 
animal life, though in a less perfect manifestation, because 
animals possess locomotion, and can somewhat change 
climate, while each plant is stationary. Thus the tropical 
birds and insects present themselves in boundless variety 
and brilliant coloring, while the pachyderms of the same 
region reach an enormous bulk, and possess amazing 
strength. Then there is the force and ferocity of the 
carnivora, such as inhabit the deserts of Africa or people 
the jungles of India. Even the intelligence of these 
creatures is developed in great degree, and their forms 
more and more approach that of man.* 

To this rule, however, the one supreme animal, man 

* " Earth and Man," page 252 



304 The Story of Creation. 

himself, forms a strange exception. His nature does not 
reach its height in the tropics, but in the temperate 
regions. Man at the equator, like man at the poles, is a 
deteriorated being ; he was created in, and belongs to, the 
temperate zones ; or rather, to one of these zones pecul- 
iarly, that which lies north of the equator ; there, says 
Moses, God first placed him, and there, says history, he 
has developed the best physical organization, reached his 
highest civilization, and maintained his best religious 
faith. 

The most perfect type of physical humanity is the 
Caucasian or white race ; and this race by its very name 
is linked to the old home of our species in Western Asia. 
Where man was first formed, there we still find him best 
formed ; and as we move out from that latitude, whether 
north or south, we find, as a rule, race-degradation. We 
go on nearly the same latitude westward into Europe, and, 
at present, we find civilization, and a well-developed 
physical man ; because the modern European is Cauca- 
sian, because he continues in the temperate zone, and, 
most of all, because those spiritual forces prevail in 
Europe, which the Christian religion exerts. But in 
primitive Europe, as we have seen, even the Caucasian 
blood did not save the race ; the knowledge of God was 
lost, and those tribes became savage, and were brought 
up again only by renewing their connection with Western 
Asia and receiving its light once more. 

As we pass down into Africa, the deterioration is soon 
manifest. There was indeed an early civilization in 
Egypt, but even that has long since departed, and the 
physical type of man conforms to the altered condition of 



Deterioration. 305 



things. The Arab shows it in his retreating forehead ; 
the Abyssinian Galla in his protruding lips and frizzled 
hair ; and after this we come to the Guinea negro, the 
Hottentot and the Bushman, who end the downward 
scale. As we follow down Eastern Asia, much the same 
state of things prevails ; the series ending in the indig- 
enous Australian and New Zealander. Running down 
the Western Continent, we find at a similar extreme the 
Patagonian and the Terra del Fuegian ; while, if we make 
our explorations in a northward direction from the same 
original starting-point, we reach, at the extremities, the 
Finns, the Laplanders, and the Esquimaux. 

These facts, brought out by the distinguished scholar 
just mentioned, tell their own story ; they indicate that 
the stone-ages of our race are not necessarily the earliest 
ages, nor the palaeolithic men necessarily those of the 
primitive stock. They show us how important it is, 
in studying the deep problem of our species, to take 
into account not only our capacity for development, but 
equally our capacity for and tendency toward deterioration. 
Emigration and consequent isolation, unless counteracted 
by special spiritual forces, tend in the direction of barba- 
rism. There has been a fall ; and these downward tenden- 
cies unresisted tell at length even upon the physical con- 
stitution ; the human becomes subordinate in us ; the 
animal more and more gains ascendency ; and if the ape 
has any connection with man, it is quite as possible that 
he is a degraded offspring of some low type of the race, as 
that he is our general ancestor. 
39 



306 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER XLVIII. 



OF ONE BLOOD. 



"jV/TOSES gives the account of the creation of just one 
pair of human beings, and traces from these the 
descent of all the peoples of the earth. That original 
pair were made conscious of their position in this respect : 
and Adam called his wife's name Eve, the life-giver, 
"because she was the mother of all living."* The 
Apostle Paul broaches this doctrine in his address to the 
Athenians, and says that God " hath made of one blood 
all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the 
earth." f Paul was a Jew and had learned this important 
truth by the study of Moses, and he set it in a high place 
in the Christian system. The root doctrine of Christianity, 
native depravity, is found here, and the corrupt nature, of 
which we all become conscious sooner or later, is accounted 
for by "one man's sin" and fall. J Out of this springs 
the additional doctrine of regeneration by the Holy Ghost, 
and on the same stock is grafted that work of the " Second 
Adam," by which an atonement is made for our sins. Our 
Christian system, therefore, and no less our Christian 

*Gen. iii. 20. tActs xvii. 26. J Rom. v. 19. 



Of One Blood. 307 



feeling, has been adjusted to the notion that the entire 
human race are of one parentage and constitute one 
family. 

The tendency of most of our scientific theorizing at the 
present day is quite in harmony with this view. Professor 
Louis Agassiz, indeed, questions the doctrine pretty 
sharply; but on this subject men of the class of Mr. 
Darwin rather go to an extreme in the direction taken by 
our Christian theology, not only assigning a common 
origin to the human species, but massing both men and 
animals in one family having one ancestral germ. A few 
suggestions, therefore, will perhaps be sufficient on the 
question of the unity of the human species. 

That the several branches of the human family greatly 
differ is obvious enough. One race is black and another 
is white ; one race is savage and another is civilized ; and, 
in respect to features, form, language, habits, tastes, there 
is such broad diversity, that it is not wonderful that some 
have held that each of the different races had a distinct 
creative origin. Perhaps in nothing are these diversities 
more conspicuous than in language ; to learn all the 
languages of the world a man would need to work for a 
whole life-time. As to this, however, Moses explains a 
little, and says that there was a divine intervention in the 
case, " confounding " human speech and dispersing the 
early races abroad ; * but, even in this difficult department, 
there is a certain unity running through the entire 
diversity ; and all our later studies confirm the doctrine 
that the whole multitude of human dialects sprang from 
one common root. As to other human diversities, the 

*Gen. xi. 



308 The Story of Creation. 

same general remark may be made. They are not such 
as to exclude the idea of a common origin for our species. 

The argument for unity of species in man is strong ; it 
is made out first, by noting the unity of our mental 
characteristics. There are indeed great differences of 
mental endowment, and these are still further enlarged by 
differences of culture, but the constitution of the human 
mind is ever the same ; memory in one man reveals the 
same general laws as memory in another ; conscience in 
one man is the same faculty as conscience in another ; 
and so are perception, judgment, fear, hope, hate, love, 
joy, sorrow. Just as you can always calculate upon a 
certain disposition in the lion, making up his lion-nature, 
so you can always reckon upon certain elements in a 
human mind, making up man-nature. Each new race of 
human beings whom you may discover, no matter how 
isolated they may be, will have certain characteristics, to 
be either guarded against or depended upon. Man is an 
animal to be met and managed, and mastered, always by 
an appeal to essentially the same class of sentiments ; 
you have to guard yourself against him in all places alike 
and for the same reasons ; you have to judge, on the same 
general principles, everywhere, how he will conduct him- 
self and what he will do. 

This race-unity is particularly manifest when you take 
into account not only his intellectual nature but his 
spiritual powers. Wherever you find a human being, you 
will discover in him the capacity for a knowledge of God ; 
it will be more than a capacity ; in some form, more or 
less distinct, that knowledge will be found already in his 
possession. He will have a religion of some sort ; he will 



Of One Blood. 309 



offer some kind of worship to some kind of superior and 
invisible being ; you can depend upon this element in his 
nature, just as you can depend upon him to resent it if you 
insult him, or to seek revenge if you injure him. Man is 
as certain to have in him a religious susceptibility as the 
lion is to be a flesh-eater, or the ox a feeder on grass ; he 
holds to the doctrine of a future state ; he holds to the 
importance of making some sort of preparation for that 
state ; he holds to the existence of some invisible being, 
or order of beings, superior to himself, whose wrath is to 
be appeased and whose favor is to be sought, at whatever 
sacrifice. 

The element of depravity will also be found in men 
everywhere. In all voyages of discovery the rule has 
been found necessary to approach the people of strange 
countries with much precaution. It is expected that, 
among every new people, there will be treachery, theft, 
perhaps a thirst for blood ; and, where voyagers grow 
careless on these matters, they sometimes pay the forfeit 
with their lives. These elements of depravity, or others 
like them, are to be looked for with as much certainty as 
anything in the race. Peculiarities proceeding from this 
origin will be specially observed if you meet human nature 
anywhere with the Christian religion. As a rule, men 
will at first oppose that religion, or at least show them- 
selves indifferent to it, and this will be the case not only 
among those peoples to whom that religion is strange and 
new, but among multitudes who accept it as the true faith. 
Depravity will always, to some extent, be found working 
against Christianity — the deteriorating tendencies of 
human nature stoutly resisting those spiritual forces by 



310 The Story of Creation. 

which alone the deterioration can be effectively counter- 
acted ; and, if the spiritual forces prevail so that men be- 
come really Christianized, then the result will also be the 
same in the upward direction, the world over ; civilization 
will at once spring up, and the story of the individual 
experience of the saving love of Christ will be told every- 
where in the same way. The love of God in the heart 
finds the same expression, whether among the British 
Islanders or the Sandwich Islanders ; among those who 
embrace the Lord Jesus Christ in our own happy America, 
or those to whom the gospel story is told in the far-off 
Zulu land. 

If we bring our argument from the physical constitution 
of man, it is equally conclusive. Cuvier taught the world 
how to classify genera and species by comparative 
anatomy, and with scarcely more than a single bone of 
some extinct creature he could proceed to construct its 
entire form. As an evidence of the correctness of such 
theoretical reconstructions, certain drawings of the hairy 
elephant may be cited. Such drawings were made from 
the dissected bones of the creature, as found in various 
places, while it was still supposed that no human being 
had ever seen the animal itself. But, among the human 
remains of the so-called reindeer era, Lartet found a piece 
of ivory, graven by human hands in that ancient time, 
with a figure of this same curious beast, matching almost 
precisely the theoretical figure which the scientific men 
had first drawn. Nay, a carcass of the elephant itself was 
found, at a still later date, encased in the ice, in Siberia, 
which still further confirmed the conclusions of scientific 
men. 



Of One Blood. 



3ii 



To the comparative anatomist, therefore, our argument 
from the bone-structure of a human being would be likely 



W 



a" 

3* 

P 
3 



a 
3 
Crq 

3 



o 

3 
P 

O 



o 

e 

3 



3* 



p 
a. 



3 

o 

p 



>-( 

p 

3 

o 

(!) 




to be entirely satisfactory. Such outward peculiarities as 
a dark-colored skin, or protruding lips, or frizzled hair, 



312 The Story of Creation. 

« 

would not, with him, have the greatest weight. Give me 
an idea of the bone-structure, he would say ; or show me 
the muscular apparatus, the digestive organs, the blood- 
system. Well, these are found the same in man the world 
over. 

How thoroughly this physical uniformity is depended 
upon, we may judge by the implicit confidence with 
which a skilled practitioner undertakes, in any part of the 
world, an operation of surgery. Some such operations 
are very critical ; and if the surgeon's knife be deflected 
from its true course but the sixteenth of an inch, in cer- 
tain parts of the body, it may sever an artery, and end the 
patient's life. But a man learns surgery in Philadelphia, 
and goes straight out to practice it in Calcutta or Hong 
Kong. He cuts as boldly into a human body among the 
people of India or of China, as among the people at home. 
European, Malay, Negro, whatever the race may be, to 
him it is all one. Bone answers to bone, muscle to 
muscle, nerve to nerve, intestine to intestine ; and heart, 
liver, artery, vein, each lies in its own place, serves the 
same purpose, and must be treated in the same way, 
whether the operation be performed on one side of the 
globe or on the other. Anatomically, therefore, and physio- 
logically, as well as intellectually and spiritually, the 
human race, everywhere, is one. There may be a flattened 
nose, or a protruding nose ; there may be woolly hair, or 
silken hair ; there may be a black skin, or a skin of pearly 
whiteness, but 

"A man's a man for a' that," 

and God hath made of one blood all the nations for to 
dwell on all the face of the earth. 






How Old Art Thou ? 313 



CHAPTER LV. 



HOW OLD ART THOU t 

T TOW many years has this last created being, Man, 
been upon the earth ? Once this was regarded 
as a very simple question. You had but to open your 
Reference Bible, look at the head of the first chapter 
of Genesis, and read the date, "4004 b. a," when lo ! all 
was plain. If you were living in the year 1870 a. d., 
this had but to be added to the 4004 b. c, and there you 
had it — 5874 years since man was created. 

But, unfortunately for our peace of mind, it was dis- 
covered that the date in the Reference Bible was quite 
unreliable, and that the genealogical tables from which it 
was made up involve questions both of authenticity and 
of interpretation, among the most difficult presented any- 
where in the sacred Word. Moreover, the archaeologists 
began to take hold of the question, and, from the facts 
which they gathered, it began to be assumed that the 
traditional time of man's continuance on the earth was 
far too short. That he was among the very last of the 
" creations " was indeed readily conceded ; but the theory 
that he first appeared on our planet about six thousand 
years ago was scouted. " Not less than a million of 
years," said one authority! "At least thirty-seven thou- 
40 



314 The Story of Creation. 

sand," said another ; and the poor little space of the 
traditional six thousand shrank into insignificance. 

A little vigor was. perhaps, lent to certain researches 
in this department, by the feeling that, in making out a 
very long continuance for the race on earth, something 
would be done to overthrow the prevailing " superstitions " 
in regard to the authority of the Bible. There have alv 
been men in the world, to whom such a book as the Bible 
is an offense, and this question of the antiquity of man 
seemed to open a convenient opportunity* to get that 
offense somewhat out of the way. In the eagerness of 
the debate, therefore, some arguments were advanced 
which do not very well bear examination. It is not obliga- 
tor}- upon the friends of the Bible to prove that man has 
been upon the earth only six thousand years, but it is 
their plain duty- to examine the evidences by which his 
existence here has been set down in such enormous 
periods ; and if any mistakes have been made in con- 
structing such " evidences," it must not be expected that 
the fact will pass unchallenged. 

One of the earliest empires into which the race was 
builded was Egypt, and if evidences of any extraordinary 
human antiquity were to be sought anywhere, it was 
natural that they should be looked for in that ancient 
land, for Egypt is not only an old country, but it has a 
peculiarity- of climate by which all ancient things are 
remarkably preserved. The pictures that still retain their 
color in some of the Egyptian temples would, in our 
country, long since have mildewed and disappeared The 
pyramids themselves, exposed to our alternations of rains 
and frosts, would have crumbled into dust-heaps, ages 



How Old Art Thou ? 315 

ago ; but in that clear, dry, and never frosty air, such 
things last on from age to age. 

When Napoleon Bonaparte was in that country, two 
of the ancient temples there were explored, each of which 
had a figure carved from wood and painted, and fastened 
to the ceiling of the temple, representing that belt of sky 
which we call the zodiac. In each of these figures the 
position of the stars and planets had a peculiar arrange- 
ment, and quite naturally it was supposed that this posi- 
tion was the one which those bodies occupied at the time 
these figures were constructed. Immediately, therefore, 
the astronomers set themselves to calculate the period of 
this special conjunction, and one of them made it out to 
be not less than fifteen thousand years ago ; and as, up 
to that time, the tradition had prevailed that man had been 
upon the earth only about six thousand years, the result 
of this computation was a little startling. True, it had 
not been proved that the wooden zodiacs were intended 
to represent the position of the heavenly bodies at the 
time when they were carved out ; but that small circum- 
stance was not much thought of, and the conclusion was 
accepted that there were men in Egypt studying astron- 
omy and building temples at least nine thousand years 
before the date supposed to be assigned in Scripture to 
the creation of our species ! 

It so happened, however, that the younger Champollion 
was in Egypt at this time, studying the hieroglyphics, 
and, learning the interest that was taken in the zodiacs, 
particularly by the people in Paris, he took the pains to 
visit these temples, and very fortunately discovered that 
each zodiac had an inscription, evidently engraved upon it 



3i6 



The Story of Creation. 



at the time it was made. He deciphered one of these 
inscriptions, and found in it such words as " Emperor, 
Claudius, Nero, and Domitian." The makers of the zodi- 
acs thus had inscribed them with these names ; and if 
they were acquainted with these names, they must have 
lived at least as late as the first centuries of the Christian 
era ! So much for the fifteen thousand years ! It was a 
pity to spoil so profound a calculation ; but the inscrip- 
tions did the work, and, from that day to this, the argu- 
ment from "the Egyptian zodiacs" has not much been 
heard of. 

A second argument for the antiquity of man, based on 
Egyptian data, has been derived from the measurement 
of the alluvium deposited by the River Nile. The Nile, 
during its flood, brings down vast quantities of earthy 
matter, which it distributes upon the soil, and thus year 
by year a bed of alluvium slowly accumulates. It has 
been attempted to show at what rate this accumulation 
progresses, and, from some careful observations, the aver- 
age reckoning is made of about five inches for every one 
hundred years. With this as a standard, of course, it is 
very easy to show how many years any particular depth 
of alluvium has been forming. Fifty inches, or a little 
over four feet in depth, will represent a thousand years ; 
and if anything is found at that depth beneath this slowly 
forming soil, the inference might be that it was placed 
there a thousand years ago. 

Of course, there would be some weak places in this 
argument, but they would not, perhaps, be much noticed. 
Thus a man might dig a pit or a well four feet deep in 
this alluvium, and something might fall into it, after 



How Old Art Thou? 317 

which, perhaps in the course of a year, the pit would be 
filled up, and so the depth at which the article would 
afterward be found would prove nothing ; or the Nile 
might cut a new channel, as it often does during high 
water, and in a second flood the channel might fill up 
again, and so things quite modern might be found at a 
great depth. But, neglecting all such considerations, a 
boring was made a few years ago, in this Nile-deposit, to 
the depth of ninety feet, bringing up a piece of earthenware, 
the work of human hands. Well, this ninety feet, on a 
scale of five inches to a hundred years, represented twenty- 
one thousand six hundred years ! Thus it was in evidence 
that a pottery-making people lived in Egypt twenty-one 
thousand six hundred years ago ! That was better than 
the zodiacs ; and if any one doubted, there was the bit 
of pottery, and it could speak for itself. It did speak. 
Experts in archaeology questioned it, and it rendered up 
its secret so as to admit of no further doubt. It was 
Roman pottery, and, therefore, less than two thousand 
years old ! 

How it got there, no one seemed to know. The boring 
might have reached the bottom of some old well, or some 
former channel of the Nile, into which this piece of earth- 
enware had accidentally fallen. But even a more plausi- 
ble supposition than that is admissible. Persons who 
have traveled much in the East know how ready the 
people are there, for a little reward, to gratify curiosity- 
hunters, and to find any antiquity that may be desired. 
If the Arab workmen at this deep boring had been charged 
to preserve any relics they might find, and especially if 
some reward were offered, they would be certain to find 



318 The Story of Creation. 

something. But, however that may have been, the argu- 
ment from the Nile-deposit has not been much insisted 
upon, since Roman pottery was found, that, according to 
the scale of reckoning, would be twenty-one thousand six 
hundred years old ! 



How Old Art Thou? 319 



CHAPTER LVI. 

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. 

A NOTHER evidence of the extreme antiquity of the 
human race is supposed to be found in certain 
caves. Human bones, and other remains of human life, 
have been discovered in such caves, and, since the time 
when such remains were deposited there, the caves have 
in some cases been flooded with water. Moreover, in 
some cases, such caves open into a cliff more than a 
hundred feet above the present level of any neighboring 
stream or body of water. Several such caves are found 
in Belgium, — one, the Trou des Noutons, is in the valley 
of a little stream known as the Lesse, and opens at the 
height of about one hundred and ten feet above that 
river. The argument in such a case is this : that the 
cave must have been flooded by the stream ; that, when it 
was thus flooded, the stream and the cave must have been 
at nearly the same level ; that since that time the stream 
must have worn its way to the depth where we now find 
its bed ; and that to wear its way to such a depth must 
have required many thousands, if not hundreds of thou- 
sands, of years ; therefore, it is concluded that man was 
upon the earth many thousands, if not hundreds of thou- 
sands, of years ago. 



320 The Story of Creation. 

The short answer to this argument is, that there has 
been, in comparatively recent geological times, a great 
continental subsidence, bringing in a general deluge. 
This subsidence, so far as we now know, may have oc- 
curred since the human race existed. It may, in short, 
have been " Noah's flood," and these cave-bones may be 
the remains of the antediluvian world. 

The most conclusive evidence on this subject, however, 
has been supposed by some to be found in those caves 
where human remains are sometimes discovered buried 
under a thick stalagmite formation. Stalagmite forms 
very slowly. It is the product of dripping lime-water. 
Such water, falling by single drops upon the floor of a 
cavern, evaporates, and leaves a deposit of lime. This 
product is the stalagmite ; and years and years are some- 
times consumed in creating such material of the thickness 
of one inch. . So, when such a deposit covers any part of 
a human body, or any relic of human handicraft, to any 
great depth, it is evidence that human beings were in 
existence a very great while ago. 

The most conspicuous instance of human remains so 
found, occurs at a cave known as Kent's Hole, near Tor- 
quay, on the coast of Devonshire, in England, where such 
productions as flint arrow-heads were discovered some 
years since, over which there was a stalagmite floor, in 
some places three feet thick. Above this floor, moreover, 
there was a layer of " black muddy mould " about one foot 
thick ; and still above this, numerous blocks of limestone 
that had fallen from the roof, and that were partly 
cemented by stalagmite.* These deposits and accumu- 

* " Recent Origin of Man," by J. C. Southall, page 197. 



How Old Art Thou? 321 

lations are naturally supposed to represent a vast period 
of time. One writer puts it, at the very lowest, at a 
million of years.* Man, as he reckons, must have been 
on the earth, making flint arrow-heads, at least a million 
years ago. 

But, alas for the uncertainty of earthly things, these 
stalagmite formations prove in practice about as unreli- 
able for time-keepers as the Nile-deposits themselves. 
The author of this work made a journey, in the year 1872, 
up the coast of ancient Phoenicia. Our party had just 
passed the " Ladder of Tyre," when we came to a swift 
stream, gushing from a fountain near by. The water of 
this fountain is held, at the head, in a great reservoir, 
from which it is in part conducted away by a Roman 
aqueduct, supported by arches of solid masonry. We 
rode under these arches on horseback quite easily, show- 
ing them to have been about ten feet high, and found 
large columns of lime-deposit, some of them at least two 
feet in diameter, which had been formed by the slow drip 
of the water from the aqueduct, and which reached from 
the ground to the masonry above our heads. Now this 
would not be called stalagmite, but it was formed by the 
very same process, though perhaps more rapidly. At any 
rate, it was plain to be seen, and it had all accumulated 
since the Romans went into that country, or in about two 
thousand years ; and the argument is, that if this deposit 
of ten feet in solid depth could be formed in two thousand 
years, then the three or perhaps five feet of stalagmite at 
Kent's Hole might have formed in somewhat less than a 
million of years. 

* " Recent Origin of Man," by J. C. Southall, page 220. 
41 



322 The Story of Creation. 

Professor Winchell, as quoted by Southall, says that in 
one of the lead caves, near Dubuque, Iowa, stalactites 
three feet long formed in three years. And from the 
same authority we also learn that Captain Brome found a 
copper plate, of the date of the 12th or 13th century, in 
the St. Martin's cave at Gibraltar, under eighteen inches 
of hard stalagmite, though the stalagmite itself was covered 
with six feet of cave earth. Here was real stalagmite, 
"hard" stalagmite ; and eighteen inches of it had formed 
in six or seven hundred years. . At the same rate, three 
feet would form in 1400 years, and five feet in a little over 
2000 years. What becomes then of our " million of 
years," supposed to be demanded to produce the five feet 
of stalagmite at Kent's Hole ? It could all have accumu- 
lated within the Christian era. 

Some of these reckonings in the department of human 
antiquity are thoroughly amusing. One such is noticed in 
"The Nation" of October 28, 1875. "The Nation" has 
no special prepossession in favor of Moses, nor any preju- 
dice against modern speculations in archaeology. Its 
statements, therefore, may be presumed to be candid. 
They are as follows : — 

" Now that science neglects nothing which will illustrate 
the history of man, it behooves scientists to be careful as 
to their authorities and wags to be merciful in their 
demands on human credulity. Our readers will doubtless 
recollect the currency obtained a few years ago in both 
hemispheres for a wild story of subterranean chambers 
opened in the excavations made for the St. Louis bridge. 
Some weeks since we observed in a Western paper a 
burlesque account of a cave discovered on the upper 



How Old Art Thou ? 323 

Mississippi, so grotesque in its details that the joke 
appeared too broad even for its object. Yet in so grave 
a periodical as the London ' Lancet,' of October 9th, the 
story comes back to us treated with all seriousness. How 
far it has been disseminated it would be difficult to say, 
for the 'Lancet' gives the 'Union Medicale,' of Paris, as 
its authority for the statement ' that in an island in the 
Mississippi a human skeleton has been found supplied 
with a wooden leg. The latter was fixed to the trunk 
with leather straps and some bronze-looking metal which 
had turned fossil,' and it adds the sage remark : ' Thus 
it would appear that oak as well as metal were [sic] used 
in prehistoric times.' In the next editions of the re- 
searches of M. Lartet and Sir John Lubbock and Mr. 
Tylor we shall look to see extensive deductions drawn 
from this 'fossil' metal and this 'prehistoric' leather." 

This brings to mind another discovery in the same line, 
located in the same region in this country. The alluvial 
deposit of the Mississippi is much like that of the Nile ; 
and the Mississippi, more than the Nile, is given to cutting 
new channels, at the time of high water. Moreover, as a 
flood will cut a new channel in a single season, so will it 
sometimes fill up some old channel during the same 
length of time. Almost any sort of modern implement 
or relic, therefore, might be found at almost any depth in 
the alluvium, anywhere near the banks of this great river. 

But when a deep cutting for railroad construction was 
made at Port Jackson, a few years ago, and pieces of wood 
were found at the depth of twenty feet, quite an argument 
was made out thereby for the antiquity of man. Those 
pieces of wood had been worked, it was said, by men who 



324 The Story of Creation. 

possessed some degree of civilization. There were plain 
marks upon them of such tools as the auger, the ax, and 
the saw ; and it was estimated that these relics were 
buried there about 57,600 years ago ; so long, it was said, 
had this deposit been accumulating, and, therefore, so 
long ago had men lived on this continent, sufficiently- 
civilized to use the auger, the ax, and the saw. 

At the time of this discovery, there existed at New 
Orleans an organization known as the Academy of 
Science, and this academy took sufficient interest in the 
report to send a committee to investigate the case. The 
committee accordingly appeared at Port Jackson, and 
found the facts precisely as reported. There was the 
deep cutting for the railroad in the alluvium, and there 
were the pieces of wood, twenty feet below the surface, 
bored, chopped, and sawed. They exhumed one large 
piece of this relic and carefully examined it. It was a 
stick of "yellow poplar," such as still flourishes along the 
Mississippi, and had constituted the gunwale of a Ken- 
tucky flat-boat! How it came there was sufficiently 
manifest — it was in an old channel of the river, which 
had been filled up with alluvium by a freshet in spring 
time : the committee returned to New Orleans, much 
like the stick they had found — badly "bored." 

A singular fatality has thus attended some very hopeful 
efforts to greatly extend the reach of human antiquity, 
and Dr. F. Pfaff, as quoted by Dr. Herbert Morris, says 
that we find " no traces of man, with any certainty, further 
back than the great climatic changes of the quaternary 
period," and that the most reliable of such traces "do not 
reach back to more than 5,000 to 7,000 years ago." * 

* v Present Conflict," page 240. 



How Old Art Thou ? 325 

It may well be that man may have been longer upon 
the earth than such figures would indicate ; but at pres- 
ent, his "antiquity," like his "derivation," if taken from 
a purely scientific view, is one of the unsolved problems. 
We do well to interpret our Bibles carefully with respect 
to this subject. We do well to keep all the doors open, 
as far as we consistently can, so as to admit into our 
interpretation all the possible results of any future inves- 
tigation. But it would be very difficult to show, in the 
present state of our knowledge, that, so far as the antiquity 
of our race is concerned, the chronological date in our 
reference Bibles is so very far out of the way, or that man 
appeared on the earth very much before "4004 b. c." 



326 The Story of Creation. 



CHAPTER LVIL 



THE SEVENTH DAY. 



W 7"E have gone through the six creative days, and it 
now remains only to notice the day of rest. This 
was the seventh day, and the record in regard to it is : 
" Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all 
the host of them ; and on the seventh day God ended his 
work which he had made ; and he rested on the seventh 
day from all his work which he had made ; and God 
blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that on 
it he had rested from all his work which God created and 
made." * The creative work has reached a state of com- 
pleteness. It is "finished," "ended," and a rest-period 
begins. Those vast secular changes which characterized 
former ages occur no more. The successive forms of life 
have reached their culmination in man, and there the line 
is brought to an abrupt termination. Up to this point, 
our world was subjected to successive impacts of creative 
energy, ever crowding it toward a more completed condi- 
tion ; but here it all ends. Not disturbance, but quiet, 
is the order of things now ; not the production of new 
forms of life, but the continuance and cultivation of those 
already in existence. 

* Gen. ii. 1-3. 



The Seventh Day. 327 

This rest follows close upon the creation of man. It 
is the characteristic of the human period in geological 
history as of no previous age. The great changes in the 
crust of the globe, the subsidence of the continents, and 
the upheaval of mountain ranges, now measurably cease. 
There are slow oscillations of level yet going forward, but 
they are so quiet as to be scarcely distinguishable ; and 
there are local disturbances, such as here and there an 
earthquake or a volcanic eruption ; but, for the most 
part, the earth-crust lies steady beneath our feet. Nature 
is uniform. Our planet is at rest. Man needs a stable 
condition of things where he shall dwell ; and, with the 
exception of a single general cataclysm, known as "the 
flood," there has been no wide-spread disturbance in our 
planet since his day began. 

It is no wonder that the inspired writer takes notice of 
this circumstance, for it stands in strong contrast with 
what goes before. The successive types of life which 
appeared during the long ages of protozoic and mesozoic 
and tertiary time, form one vast procession. In the vege- 
table kingdom, they march in upon our world in such 
divisions as the acrogens and the cycads, the palms and 
the angiosperms. In the animal kingdom, the family of 
the mollusks appears, and, following hard after them, the 
great procession of the articulates. Then the vertebrates 
file down upon the open area, under such divisions as the 
fish, the reptiles, and the birds ; and last of all comes the 
enormous army of the mammalia, with their king and 
ruler, man. So swarm in these new life-forms, the crust 
of the globe meanwhile sinking under the seas, or lifting 
its dripping continents from their briny plunge-bath ; 



328 The Story of Creation. 

while at one era the internal fires belch out, and at an- 
other, glaciers a mile in thickness press down from either 
pole. So it went on, till man appeared, when obedient 
Nature, recognizing her lord, at once grew quiet, and ever 
since there has been a great calm. 

It is an admitted fact that, so far as is known, no new 
type of life has appeared, no continent been created, no 
mountain-range upheaved, and no great tract of country 
destroyed, since the human era was inaugurated. The 
old life-processes continue, existing types reproduce them- 
selves with certain closely restricted variations, but that 
is all. So far as creation is concerned, science fully con- 
firms the Mosaic record, and says that here " God rested 
from all his work which he had created and made." 

How Moses should have been able so accurately to 
mark the period at which this rest-day began, must for- 
ever be a mystery to any person who denies that he wrote 
by inspiration of God. Moses had no geological system 
to guide him ; and there was no possible reason why, if 
he invented his story, he should not have reversed the 
order of creation, instead of putting it as he did. It was 
just as natural to suppose that man was created first as 
that he was created last. It was quite as natural to say 
that, as the other creatures were made for him, so, like 
the woman, they were created after him, as it was to say 
that they all came before him ; but not so did Moses state 
the case. A long ascending scale of animal life, he says, 
and at the end, man. Then creation is arrested, the earth 
quieted, and order reigns. So he tells his story, and so 
we find the case to have been. 

God makes both his working and his resting a pattern 



I 









The Seventh Day. 329 

for us. We need to have something to do, and he puts 
us in circumstances to demand exertion, and says, " Six 
days shalt thou labor." We need, after exertion, to cease 
from toil awhile, and he gives us one day in seven as a 
Sabbath, and says, " In it thou shalt not do any work." 
The rest-time does not need to equal the work-time ; and 
so he tells us to take six work-days to one Sabbath ; for, 
so Moses says God did when he made the world. And, 
even for purely secular purposes, we find our rest day as 
valuable as any day of the seven. We need such a day 
for physical recuperation ; we shall live longer and live 
more happily ; we shall accomplish more and do it more 
easily, to take six days of work to one of rest. 

For spiritual purposes our rest day is above all impor- 
tant. It commemorates the original creation of matter 
and life. Under Christian arrangements it celebrates that 
higher creation which was completed in the resurrection 
of our Lord, and which brings in the "new heavens and 
the new earth." It is a constant reminder to us of that 
spiritual element which God breathed into man, and which 
needs diligent culture and care. This day, coming to us 
by God's appointment, once each week, says, " You have 
a nature which the other creatures have not ; you have 
necessities to which they are strangers, and you are 
marked for a destiny to which they can never aspire." 
This day, well used, gives us the opportunity for conse- 
crating our social powers to a spiritual end, by coming 
together as congregations, to worship God. Having rest 
from worldly care on this day, we can surrender our minds 
to meditation upon divine things. It is a day on which 
we receive much instruction, and to which we largely 
42 



330 The Story of Creation. 

owe our knowledge of God and of his Book ; and, under 
that mantle of holy light which sometimes falls upon us 
on that day, and amid the solemn stillness to which the 
world is hushed, voices and visions are borne to us from 
the great hereafter, and we ripen for the "rest that 
remaineth for the people of God." 

Some of the early institutions set up among men may 
outlive their usefulness and pass away. Some such 
arrangements are distinctly designated as transient in the 
writings of Moses, and of the other Old Testament saints. 
But this day of rest, this Sabbath of the Lord, will be 
needed for man while man makes this world his home ; 
and, like its ante-type, the glorious heaven, it has been 
constituted that, at least for human time, it shall " never 
pass away." 



A Resume. 331 



CHAPTER LVIII. 



A RESUME. 



T T 7E are now in a position to answer the question with 
which we started, Does the ancient document agree 
with the record in the rocks ? We have seen what the 
Story of Creation is, as Moses gives it ; and we have seen 
what the facts of the case are, as science declares them, 
and thus are able to say whether the story conflicts with 
the reality, or whether it marvelously foreshadows all that 
science has discovered on this field. That there should 
remain some points in which the harmony of the two 
records can not yet be made out, will not be thought 
strange ; but that in all their leading particulars, the 
story from Moses and the story from the rocks agree, 
would seem to have been put beyond all fair question, 
and this volume will be fitly concluded by placing some of 
these points of agreement side by side : — 

1. According to Moses, nature had a beginning; and, 
according to the record in the rocks, each life-form had a 
beginning, and every existing thing looks backward in the 
same direction. 

2. According to Moses, matter was at first formless, 
void, dark, chaotic ; and it is now generally agreed that 
all matter was originally nebulous, while certainly it 



332 The Story of Creation. 

must be admitted that our own planet at least was once 
in a confused and chaotic condition. 

3. Moses represents that the Spirit of God moved upon 
this formless waste ; and we are quite certain that some- 
thing has set matter everywhere in motion. 

4. Moses represents this moving as a kind of incubation, 
and says that it was followed by light ; and we know that 
by some process, not only has motion been imparted to 
matter, but it has also received such qualities as elec- 
tricity, chemical affinity, and gravitation, which- with 
motion, would soon create light in a nebulous body. 

5. Moses puts the creation of light before the appear- 
ance of the sun ; and in this luminous nebula we find his 
words made good, for it was light long before the sun was 
formed ; or, if we suppose that he is speaking of our planet 
exclusively, it is easy to point to a time when for ages 
there must have been light here, though no sun was to be 
seen. 

6. Moses says that God made an expanse ; and when 
the original nebula broke up, wide expanses were opened ; 
or, if we suppose that by the expanse he means the sky, 
he uses the right term to designate it, though till long 
after his day men thought it a "firmament." 

7. Moses does not at first call the expanse " good ; " 
and, if he refers to the atmosphere, it was not good, but 
as first formed was reeking with deadly vapors. 

8. Moses teaches that before life appeared our globe 
was covered with water ; and no scientific man doubts 
that there was a primitive universal ocean. 

9. Moses marks an era of the appearance of dry land ; 
and geology tells us of the uplifting of the continents. 



A Resume. 333 

10. Moses calls all those early waters " seas ; " and the 
water from which the continents were lifted was neither 
lake nor river, but sea. 

11. On the day when dry land appeared, says Moses, 
" the earth brought forth grass ; " and the indications of 
life begin in just that early age. 

1 2. Moses puts vegetable life before animal life ; and 
the geologists all agree that so it undoubtedly was. 

13. Moses gives an ascending scale of vegetation, cul- 
minating in "fruit trees ;" and the geological record runs 
up from the sea-weeds to the angiosperms. 

14. Moses states that next after vegetation began, the 
sun appeared ; and scientific men hold that soon after 
vegetation sprang up, the earth's photosphere passed away, 
showing the sun and sky; some, however, refer this 
change to a clearing up epoch after an age of warm, moist, 
cloudy weather. 

15. Moses says that animal life appeared first in the 
waters ; and geology shows that all early life was marine. 

16. Moses calls those early creatures " spawners ; " and 
geology shows that such creatures were amazingly fruitful. 

17. At a later stage Moses shows us the tanninim, or 
long-drawn creature ; and this well describes the Saurian 
race of the Mesozoic ages. 

18. Moses connects reptilian life with that of the flying 
creature ; and some of those reptiles not only got to 
themselves wings, but produced quills upon their tails, 
while bird-life was in the same age abundant. 

19. The last great life epoch is designated by Moses, 
mammalian ; and mammalian life characterizes Neozoic 
time. 



334 The Story of Creation. 

20. Though man is a mammal, Moses makes a break 
in the story between the mammals and man ; and that 
break exactly matches the great ice age. 

21. Man's creation finished the six days' work, and God 
rested ; and since the human era began, the earth has 
been quiet and no further forms of life have appeared. 

22. Man, according to Moses, was first located in the 
region of the Euphrates ; " and from some centre in Western 
Asia, all the races have spread abroad. 

23. Moses describes the original home of our first 
parents as a " garden," or an inclosure, and indicates that 
it was a pleasant place, where several streams were to be 
found, some of which we cannot now identify ; and, if it 
were some Asiatic Chamouni, some green and sheltered 
nook, such as often appears in the neighborhood of a 
melting glacier, the picture would be perfect, streams 
and all. 

24. Man directly had to leave his garden and encounter 
a colder climate and a more sterile soil ; and there was a 
cold period, known as the reindeer epoch in palaeocosmic 
times, when the great glacier most likely crowded down 
into some of the green valleys, and when man suffered 
from the rigor of the climate. 

25. Meantime, says Moses, man betook himself, in cer- 
tain quarters, to rude modes of life, developed great 
physical strength, became uncontrollably violent, and was 
swept off by a flood ; and the remains of palaeocosmic 
men are found in caves that have been " flooded," and in 
situations and surroundings indicating amazing strength, 
large stature, and a rude and violent life ; while it is 
generally agreed that since the glacial period the conti- 
nents have had one short dip under the sea. 



A Resume". 335 

Here are twenty-five particulars, constituting an outline 
of the Story of Creation ; and in all these particulars the 
Mosaic record and the rock record read singularly alike. 
Other points of agreement might easily be indicated, but 
this may well suffice. In one or two instances, the re- 
semblance we have traced may be a mere coincidence, 
but taking the entire story, the parallel places are too 
many and too distinctly marked for any mere chance 
work. When Moses wrote his Story of Creation, he 
somehow knew "how the worlds were made," and the 
geologists and archaeologists of our day have only suc- 
ceeded in discovering from nature what this wonderful 
man gave an account of three thousand years ago. 

The conclusion would seem irresistible. Moses wrote 
his story by inspiration of God. 



FINIS. 



I 



■ 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



029 822 317 A 



